Letterboard: Spell and Speak

Letterboard is a communication board for people who spell out what they want to say. Tap large letters to build a message, then tap the speaker to have your phone or tablet read it aloud. Nothing is spoken until you choose.

WHO IT IS FOR
Letterboard is made for non-speaking and minimally speaking people who spell to communicate, including autistic people and people with apraxia of speech, and for everyone who supports them. It starts from presuming competence: not speaking is not the same as not thinking.
• Spellers and their communication and regulation partners (CRPs): a partner can hold the phone or tablet at whatever angle the speller needs, and the letters never move
• Families, teachers, therapists and speech-language pathologists using letterboard approaches such as Spelling to Communicate (S2C), the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) or the Spellers Method
• Spellers moving from an alphabetical letter board to a full QWERTY keyboard
• Anyone using a letter board as AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) who wants their words spoken aloud
• No word prediction or autocorrect: every letter is the speller's own

LARGE, CLEAR LETTERS
• The board fills the screen and keeps every letter in the same place when you rotate the device
• Alphabetical order, or a phone-style QWERTY keyboard with numbers and capitals/lowercase
• Move letters, add symbols, rows and columns to match the board you already use
• Six colour themes, custom colours and your own saved palettes

WRITE AND SPEAK
• A message line with undo, cursor movement, space, backspace and clear
• Speech uses the voices installed on your device, with a voice and speed for each language
• Show the message in large text for someone to read
• Save phrases you use often and insert them with one tap

NUMBERS AND MATHS
• A number board that types into the same message, one tap away from the letters
• The person writes the whole sum, including their own answer, and it is read aloud as written: "5 + 3 = 8"
• Square roots, powers, brackets and comparisons are read as words
• An optional answer check for helpers, off by default, shows a silent ✓ or ✗ after the answer has been spoken

PRIVATE BY DESIGN
• No internet permission, no accounts, no ads, no analytics
• Messages, phrases and settings stay on your device
• Speech is produced by the speech engine installed on your device; that engine has its own privacy policy