Hi. I am usually very verbal but still struggle to say what i feel and express my thoughts accurately. I am wondering what i can do to improve this in the short term. I am aware of AAC, in the form of iPad or Android apps and i am wondering what AAC apps exist and other schedule apps? (followers may know of any good ones?) preferably free or cheap. Also, i am wondering how i could explain this to my family without sounding like a "special snowflake". How can i use AAC w/o feeling embarrassed?
Fortunately, this is a common experience regardless of neurotype, so your family should understand if you find it easier to talk about some things via different communication methods.What you use depends on what you need out of the service.If you’d prefer for the entire discussion to be in writing and you want to have a discussion with someone you know, or you want to have the conversation discreetly, then you could simply use text, email, or private messaging via social media (such as Facebook messenger). You can do this in the same room as the other person, or from a different room, and it might be easier to respond to their messages in your own time if they’re also communicating in text. Most of these services would be free or cheap, covered by your phone contract/free if you have access to wifi. It also doesn’t depend on having to hand your own device back and forth.Whatever way you decide to communicate you can just say (or type) somethign like: “It’s a bit hard to talk about this kind of stuff, so I’m typing my thoughts, instead.” “Hi, it’s a bit hard to talk about this in person/face to face/verbally, so can we use this?”Some free apps I know of/use:AAC APPS:Emergency chat You can set an alert so that people can see why you need to use emergency chat rather than speaking to them verbally. You can also set it so that people can either respond on your device or they can respond verbally while you use the device to type (but you will need to hand them or show them the device for them to be able to read your messages).Aloud!Text to speech app. I’m not sure if this is different now but I’m pretty sure that when I first got it the default voice was female and I had to pay for a male voice, so if you want some options regarding the voice/accent, you might have to pay for those but the app itself is free.Here is a post with links to lists of AAC apps (more picture based ones, rather than typing).SCHEDULES/ROUTINES:Here is a post with a list of apps for schedules/routines.
