[I am a mostly speaking autistic person with occasional episodes of speech loss or of "choosing" not to speak to conserve spoons.]
I have been playing around with my AAC apps while I've been off tumblr. I am annoyed I can't find one (that's affordable) that has the combination of features I want.
I am on an android phone and in this post I am mostly comparing these three apps to each other. I have tried a couple of others and found them not even good enough (for me) to continue with. Also this is not a full in-depth review it's just my personal thoughts on them.
Speech Assistant v good for colour coding/customising. Easiest for using typing and for switching between typing/buttons. Easiest for editing. Reasonably customisable button/grid size though I would like more options tbh. Loveeeee the option to show message full screen and flipped. User profiles for different message sets. Can make it play through speakers even when headphones attached. Cheap premium version gives unlimited folders. BUT no sub-folders. No "home" board that it returns to automatically.
Weave Chat has "home" board that it automatically returns to. Suggestions/predictions bar including smart tenses (eg hitting "go -> ed" gives you "went"). Free! Folders and subfolders, but with BAFFLING restrictions - it seems you can only put 2 subfolders in a folder? And you can't put any subfolders in the "verbs" folder?? what?? Just generally kinda janky. Soooo hard and slow to edit, though they just added a function to edit from the board page which makes it marginally (but only marginally!) easier. You can edit it on a laptop which again makes it marginally (but only marginally) easier. You can also access free-type v easily from any page but it doesn't automatically bring up your actual device keyboard, you have to hit the box first, and I ALWAYS miss the confirm/add button and have to hit it again. And I'm v accurate usually.
Also other small things like the device back button not working and having to use the one within the app which is at the top of the screen. ALSO very limited colours. Colours are probably more important to me than images; images are quite visually overwhelming to me, but the colours help guide my eyes and fingers. Not nearly enough control over button/grid size! And tiny gripe: it gives grid size by rows then columns instead of columns then rows, which just. why. No user profiles - if you edit a category, the buttons will be changed in any other grid layout you try too.
Cboard also v hard to edit. Free version pops up with a prompt to buy every time you open it. Lots of folders and subfolders available. Decent range of colours, but not as visually pleasant to me as Speech Assistant. Pretty difficult to edit. Leaves space for images on the buttons even if you're not using them, leading to wasted space. Hardly any text fits on the buttons. The typing mode is abysmal.
In my dream AAC app:
cboard's fully customisable grid size, with its option of being fixed or scrolling
cboard's unlimited (as far as I can tell) folder and subfolders
speech assistant's typing mode and show full screen
speech assistant's user profiles, which even allows you to have different settings per user (eg in one it reads each button as you press it, and in another it doesn't)
weave chat's tense and prediction functions
weave chat's return-to-home function (though this should, like everything, be OPTIONAL)
weave and cboard's ability to edit your board on another device (eg laptop) and sync it to the primary one
also absolute wild dream time, I want a full set of BSL-based images drawn to be AAC images. I am considering trying to do this myself but I am not particularly a drawer of things (don't enjoy)
