My much loved nephew had a major stroke in January and is now in rehab but still unable to talk. Can anyone recommend apps preferably for android as we have an available device. Thank you
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Welcome Bobbo,
Wish your Nephew all the best in there recovery.
Bev X
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Welcome @Bobbo sorry to hear your nephew has had a major stroke.
I canât help with apps iâm afraid. Just wanted to welcome you. Iâm sure others will be along with help soon.
Best wishes
Ann
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Thank you very much for your replies, very kind indeed.
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I canât give you a recommendation for apps as I have not used them for aphasia, but I was looking for dysphagia help just now and saw so many apps and devices that claim to help. I would ask the Speech Therapist for recommendations. I assume he has one? I was able to start speaking again after quite sometime. They had me training with vowel sounds, trying to make them low to high. At first I couldnât get it. They kept having to tell me again and again, but it finally registered. Also, using the Spirometer helped strengthen muscles enough to actually get sound out. Bless you for caring to find a place to ask questions to try to help your nephew. I hope he will be much better soon. I havenât run across anyone here, so far, who has not improved tremendously, even if not totally. I am still improving after 22 months. It is not instant, but it can happen.
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Hi, so sorry to hear of your nephewâs stroke but welcome to this forum. Iâm sure there will be lots of people here who will be to help you and guide you in the right direction.
Best wishes and I hope your nephewâs recovery goes well.
Regards Sue
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Hi @Bobbo and welcome to the forum. I have still have mild aphasia but for the first weeks was unable to talk. Over 2yrs since my stroke now a speech is relatively good.
But until your nephew actually starts making sound, a speech app isnât going to help much I would have thought, though I donât actually know. He should be receiving Speech therapy in rehab which will be concentrating on getting his vocal chords and muscles of his mouth working again firstâŚhe canât speak without them. And, as others already have said, once he starts making sounds, the speech therapist will be able to advice you on apps, along with providing all sorts of exercises and tools to aid his speech.
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Thank you again for all of your input it is good to know that so many are supporting each-other
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Hi bobbo
Have a look on the Google play store at apps by Tactus therapy namely Language therapy light.
You can download a free version which will give you a feel for what it can offer. My wife although her speech hasnât been effected, has trouble turning thoughts into speech.
This app is really helping, personally l feel the NHS tested product, pay for version, is well worth the cost.
Anyway hope this helps. All the best Mick.
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Thanks for that Mick, I have downloaded the trial version and will try it on my next visit to him.
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Hi Bobbi
My husband has just started using the Jabber wacky app, it is text to speech and he finds it easy to use and itâs free. Was recommended by speech therapist.
Wishing your nephew all the best.
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Thank you for that, I will take a look at it. Best wishes to you and your husband.
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My husband has marked aphasia and although he can read words he cannot comprehend text. We have recently discovered that iPads and iPhones have a âspoken contentâ function which will read the text from their screen including emails, WhatsApp newspaper apps and websites. It is absolutely brilliant and I wish we had found it a year ago.
Settings >Accessibility >Spoken content> Speak Screen
You can even choose a voice.
In Android it may be called Select to speak or text to speak. Not sure.
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Android does also have these options with many different ways to get to them. I use the accessability tools on my Motorola phone, from settings. I could use Google tools on my phone as well but donât find them necessary. I do use them on my Chromebook. Also there are many apps available. I struggle terribly to read from a book or my phone, but can read fairly well on the Chromebook by changing size or highlighting the line I am reading. Talk to text, and readers are so helpful for me. My perfectionism wanted to fix every mistake, as there are many in talk to text, but a dyslexic friend taught me to tell people to sound out what it wrote and most of the time one will understand even with the mistakes.
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Android
SpeechAssistant
.
Speech Assistant is an AAC app designed for people who are speech impaired, but are able to read. This may be in the case of aphasia, MND/ALS, after a stroke, in case of vocal cord problems or other speech problems. The app can also be a tool to practice during rehabilitation.
With the app you can create categories, words and phrases, which are placed on large buttons. With these buttons you can create messages that can be shown or spoken. It is also possible to type any text using the keyboard
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For aphasia apps I would check out the resources at
To go the other way IE speech to text gboard Is a keyboard app on Android that supports voice recognition. So is dragon which is normally built into swype
Other apps that might be useful are things like Google Look To Speak that uses the front-facing camera to detect eye movement and presents a hierarchy of words To select which it will then vocalise for you .
Some searches through the search engines looking for the national associations for different conditions quickly throws up the apps that the associations users have been experimenting with and found useful. That means you donât get the latest solutions but sometimes after they were published but you do get the proven solutions
For aphasia specifically Iâd also keep an eye on eva park from university of London. Itâs a virtual environment specifically for people with aphasia to share communication with each other. Itâs been in research so limited access It must soon open its doors to wider access .
Also the cafes I run with Louise have a 1 or two attendees who have Different levels of aphasia and we know to be patient, some prefer to listen, Itâs an opportunity to practise. Occasionally Tom from the When The Words Went Away comes to the cafe (also He runs an in person cafe that I go to once a month but that probably doesnât help most of the folk on here!)
Simon
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Oops!
SpeechAssitatnt is a stand-alone app.
Phraseboard is an app that installs itself as an alternate keyboard so you are able to use for texting, typing, and text-to-speech communication. There is a wide variety of voices. One of the benefits is type once and store. One of the users, who previously had no words, could finally go up to the coffee shop and âspeakâ âI would like a cappuccino, please.â instead of pointing and gesturing. Very empowering. We programmed phrases that were useful to him, and family members so texting and email were a âone keyâ press.
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And for all those like me who have struggled to this point with the reference to the apps wondering what AAC is ironically itâs AUGMENTATIVE and ALTERNATE COMMUNICATIONS - the use of acronyms without expansion is a barrier to communications!
Once you know the abbreviation and realise that you can search for it because for example it isnât a publishers name the search engines return a lot of hits
Speech assistant for IOS and Android is on https://www.a-soft.nl/
Donât know if it requires a restart of phone after installation but I havenât seen its keyboard yet show up in my keyboard switching menu
Ciao Simon
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