TalkBoard Chinese

TalkBoard Chinese is a free communication board for children who cannot speak, or who are still learning to. Your child taps pictures, the words gather into a sentence at the top, and the app says the whole sentence aloud in Mandarin.

It was built for a preschooler in a Chinese-speaking household, and it is given away because families who need this kind of tool shouldn't have to pay for it.

WHY IT IS LAID OUT THIS WAY

Children who use communication boards find words by muscle memory, not by reading. So every button here has a permanent home. Seventeen core words — I, you, want, don't want, more, help me, yes, this, that, good, bad, what, like, don't like, give me, stop, all done — sit in the same place on every single page and never move.

The home page holds food, toys, actions and places together, so a child can say "I want water" without changing pages once. Buttons are colour-coded by word type, a convention borrowed from the Fitzgerald Key, so children learn to scan by colour before they can read.

WHAT IS INCLUDED

• 12 × 6 grid, 72 square buttons, sized for a fingertip on iPad
• Over 110 words across home, feelings, people, places and daily routines
• An English keyboard page with a number row, for children beginning to type
• Sentence bar — tap words, then tap Speak to say the whole thing
• Chinese and English are spoken in the correct voice when you mix them
• Button labels can show English, pinyin, or nothing at all

MAKE IT YOUR CHILD'S

Behind a parental gate, you can add words to any empty space, rename buttons, and hide words you aren't teaching yet. Hiding keeps the position — when you unhide it later, everything your child learned still works.

You can use a photo for any button. For grandparents, a favourite cup, the family car, or a place you go often, a real photograph is far easier for a child to recognise than a drawing. Photos stay on your device.

Export a backup file any time so your work survives a new device.

PRIVACY

No account. No internet connection. No advertising. No analytics. No third-party code of any kind. Nothing your child does leaves the iPad. The app works with the device in airplane mode.

FREE, WITH NO CATCH

No purchases, no subscription, no upgrade, no ads. It will stay that way.

A NOTE FOR FAMILIES

This app is a tool, not a treatment. If your child is not speaking, a speech-language pathologist can help you choose the right vocabulary and the right access method — that choice matters more than any app. Use this alongside their guidance, and model it yourself: pointing at the pictures and talking to your child through the board is how children learn to use one.