ATU620 – App2Speak with Gina Baldwin

Hi, this is Gina Baldwin, and I’m a speech language pathologist and founder of APP2Speak. And this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 620 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on April 14th, 2023. On today’s show, we are super excited to welcome Gina Baldwin, founder of APP2Speak, back to the show. Now she was on her show way, way back in October of 2020, but she’s here to tell us all about APP2Speak, new things with it and just how it can help individuals with disabilities communicate.

Please don’t forget, if you ever have a question for us here, a comment or maybe someone you’d like to hear interviewed, please reach out. You can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Call our listener line at (317) 721-7124 or drop us a line on Twitter @indataproject. We always love hearing from you and some of our best guests come from your suggestions. If you’re looking for a transcript of our show, please head over to our website at eastersealstech.com where you can find a full transcript of today’s show. Our transcripts are generously sponsored by Relay Indiana. You can find out more about them relayindiana.com. As always, we thank you so much for listening. Now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Maybe you’re looking for some new podcast to listen to. Well, make sure to check out our sister podcast, Accessibility Minute and ATFAQ or Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. If you’re super busy and don’t have time to listen to a full podcast, be sure to check out Accessibility Minute, our one-minute-long podcast that gives you just a little taste of something Assistive Technology based so that you’re able to get your Assistive Technology fix without taking up the whole day. Our other show is Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions or ATFAQ. On Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions, Brian Norton leads our panel of experts, including myself, Belva Smith, and our own Tracy Castillo as we try to answer your assistive technology questions. This show does rely on you, so we’re always looking for new questions, comments, or even your answers on assistive technology questions. So remember, if you’re looking for more Assistive Technology podcasts to check check out, you can check out our sister shows Accessibility Minute and ATFAQ wherever you get your podcasts. Now including Spotify and Amazon Music.

Listeners, I’d like to invite you all to our web accessibility webinar for developers on May 10th, 2023. Renowned web accessibility professional Dennis Lembree covers an array of topics for developing accessible websites. The training begins with disability and assistive technology basics and an overview of guidelines and laws. Main topics include content structure, images, forms, tables, video, CSS and ARIA. Techniques on writing for accessibility and testing for accessibility are also covered. If you’re interested in registering for this free training on web accessibility for developers, please click on the link down in the show notes or visit eastersealstech.com.

Listeners, if you happen to be listening to us from the Indianapolis area, I just wanted to let you know about a couple of cool things coming up. I will be presenting at the PATINS Tech Expo conference on Thursday, April 20th. I’ll be presenting at 12:30 on the new Microsoft accessibility tools and how they can be used with different devices to help students with disabilities access the world, their studies and other technology. The PATINS Tech Expo takes place in Carmel, Indiana, so if you happen to be in the area, definitely do check it out.

I’ll also be presenting the next week on Monday the 24th and Tuesday April 25th at the Indiana TRIO 2023 annual professional conference, that is in downtown Indianapolis. I’ll be presenting from 3:30 to 4:30 on Monday the 24th on assistive technology apps and other things for students with learning disabilities, and then presenting again on Tuesday the 25th in the morning from 10:15 to 11:15 on assistive technology apps, devices and other things for students with autism. If you happen to be at either of these conferences or think about attending, please do, check it out. I’d love to see you there. Definitely stop by and say hi and hopefully you can take a little bit of good information from there.

Today, listeners, we’re very excited to welcome Gina Baldwin back to Assistive Technology Update. Now, she was first on our show back in October of 2020, but Nicole was lucky enough to run into her at ATIA and she’s been nice enough to come back on the show and talk about APP2Speak and everything that she’s been up to for our listeners. Well, Gina, welcome back to the show.

Well, thank you, Josh.

I am really excited to get into talking about everything because it has been quite a while since you’ve been on our show. And can you start off by maybe telling our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Absolutely. I am a speech language pathologist. I’ve worked with children and adults and been in the field for over 40 years, so that’s quite some time. I enjoy taking walks with my fur babies and my husband, Scott.

Awesome, awesome. Well, we won’t keep you from your walks too much. I’m not sure exactly where you are, but hopefully it’s a nice spring day. Here in Indy, it’s pretty darn rainy today. So hopefully you’ve got something a little bit nicer. But the main reason we have you on is we want to talk about APP2Speak. So I guess we’ll start with kind of the big question, what is it?

APP2Speak is a photo-based AAC app to help individuals who are non-verbal or need help with their speech. It is photo based, and a simple touch of that photo, there’s speech output that indicates an immediate want or need.

Very cool. And Gina, can you tell me why did you create APP2Speak?

Several years ago I was working with a couple individuals who had experienced a stroke. They were using a picture board to point to their wants and needs, and as you know, those picture boards don’t speak and so I did a little investigating and didn’t find a photo based app, and I created it with a couple of my clients in mind. One in particular, Dorothy, who was using an iPad to Skype with her daughter who lived in Bulgaria. And as you know, pointing to pictures and words on a board through Skype, made it pretty difficult for her daughter to understand what she was trying to say. And it was, “Aha. If we have a photo based board that actually talks, that would be very helpful.”

Well, not only that, but I’m sure that gives you a lot more options. You’re kind of limited on a photo board or you’ve got to have extra boards and other things, so I’m sure that opens up a whole lot more communication to be able to maybe scroll through things or at least have some more options to be able to speak. But I can only imagine trying to use a picture board over Skype all the way to Bulgaria. That really has to limit speech and make it a little hard to squint and see what it is they’re actually pointing at as well.

Absolutely.

Gina, maybe for our listeners who maybe aren’t as versed in AAC or really in communication, because it’s something we kind of all take for granted, why is APP2Speak important kind of for an individual who may need it?

APP2Speak provides a means of communication, and providing communication is what’s most important for individuals. They need to be able to communicate their wants and needs, their medical needs, have conversations with family, friends, even coworkers. Can you imagine not being able to talk? It’s very frustrating, and so APP2Speak helps those individuals to be able to communicate those important things.

That’s awesome. And then I couldn’t have explained it any better. I know I’ve had folks explain it to me as have you ever sat there and tried to talk to somebody who’s just not listening to you, now imagine if everybody did that? And it’s like, oh my gosh, that it really is… As we talk about APP2Speak, it’s picture based and I touch on it can do the talking for me. Can I customize the pictures and the boards and everything?

Yes, we have a feature called custom pages, they’re endless, and that’s where the user can integrate their own photos within the app. They can also take a photo with APP2Speak and they can record a familiar voice for personalization. So they can take a photo of their dog, take photos of all of their family, or use those photos that are in their photo library and they just integrate it into the custom feature on APP2Speak. They can title the photo with a familiar word and they can create speech output. They can create a whole conversation.

So Josh, let’s say you have a toothache today and you want to express that you want to go to the dentist. We can have a photo of the dentist and once they select that photo, they can have the opportunity to say, “My tooth is hurting. I need to go to the dentist. Will you schedule an appointment for dentist?” Or whatever they really want to say about that topic. They can create a whole conversation about one photo or they can just have a simple, “The dentist.” And say, “I need to go to the dentist.”

Oh, wow. So really opens up communication. I know sometimes, and I’ve talked to folks before, communication’s much more than just words. But that is great that they can just with the touch of that open up that whole dialogue. So I’m sure that’s probably customized to the cognitive level of the individual or how much communication they need. Is that correct?

Yes, absolutely. Again, it could be just one word associated with the picture with the speech output or multiple phrases.

That is awesome. And how many, I’m going to keep saying boards, that’s probably not the right word, but how many different boards can I have loaded on the APP2Speak at a time?

The app is endless, so the custom pages, you can have as many custom pages as you want. Most people categorize their pages for maybe the community, one for church, one for school, family, chores, favorites, foods, restaurants. It’s endless. So whatever their cognitive ability, the sky’s the limit.

It’s great because I always hate as I learn something new or as I integrate more to the community or have something else, I don’t want to have to get rid of a board that was important in order to make a new one. So that’s great that they can just continue to make those as they need them and as life change and progresses over the years. Well, talking about progressing over the years, as you talked about where it all started, APP2Speak has been around for a little while. How has it changed over the years?

Yes, APP2Speak has been around for almost eight years. Initially, APP2Speak was developed for the iPad and it had some limitations. It didn’t quite have all the features that we have today. We developed it several years later for the Android tablet. In 2020, I believe right before we spoke, we released APP2Speak to be available on Android and Apple phones, on smartphones. And along the way we’ve added additional features like text to speech, and we can talk about that in a little bit. We added navigation features for individuals to make it a little bit easier or to have shortcuts. And then in April of last year, almost a year ago, we released an APP2Speak Lite. And what the Lite is is a mini version of APP2Speak. And we designed that because there’s individuals that contact us sometimes real late at night and they just want to trial or they want to see a demonstration.

Well, with having an APP2Speak Lite for, I think it’s for $15, they can actually just buy it, they can try it out and feel if it’s something that will work for them. The second reason why we would develop the APP2Speak Lite was because there’s professionals like myself and yourself who may not have a budget to purchase the full APP2Speak. So for the low cost of the Lite, it gives them an inexpensive resource to help individuals. And the third reason we develop the APP2Speak Lite is there are families out there who have loved ones that may be at the end of life stage and on hospice, and they’ve lost their ability to communicate. But with the photos, it provides them a quality of life, a means to communicate their medical needs, their wants and needs. So we’re excited that we release the APP2Speak Lite.

Oh, definitely. And I’m sure that can also help folks, sometimes you need a backup device, maybe they use another device most of the time, but it’s just nice to have the extra and the backup, so that’s great you guys thought of it. And yeah, the demonstration part is a great thing. So we thank you, from folks like myself who may have to demonstrate things for folks, it’s so nice to be able to at least give them an idea of how things work. Because as you know, and after doing this podcast, some of these things are really hard to describe to people. So it’s nice to be able to get their hands on it. Well, and you already brought this up, so tell me about the text to speech feature that you just mentioned.

The text to speech feature allows individuals who are able to type messages and speak them, and we have the ability in the text to speech feature for them to save frequently used words and phrases. So they could just go to that word or phrase, touch on it, speak it, and if there’s something that’s not programmed in their custom pages like a joke or something off the wall, they can go to their text to speech feature and type in an answer or a question.

Nice, nice. Yeah, that gives you just so much more freedom, especially as you get out in the community and encounter things that maybe you weren’t expecting, so you probably don’t have a picture of it in there yet. So that’s great and it has to help out a whole heck of a lot. Then just tell me about the navigation changes that you mentioned. What has changed and been added in there?

The navigation additions that we included just recently is for the person to be able to go from page to page without swiping. Let’s say they don’t want to swipe, so they would touch on the page number and the feature’s called go to page. So they’re on their custom page five, they talk about McDonald’s, they place an order, and then they want to tell their family member or friend they want to go to the bathroom. So they go to page, go to page one and select, “I’m going to go to the bathroom.” Or whatever it may be. So instead of swiping, it’s a go to page. We also have a feature to insert a page on the custom pages. So the custom pages, say you created five pages, Josh, and all of a sudden you’re on your sixth page and you’re like, “Oh wow, you know what? I want that to be next to page five.” So you have the ability to insert that page next to page five. Or say the family, you have a family page and all of a sudden more nieces and nephews are being born and you need another page for that, so you can insert and move pages on the custom pages.

We also have a setting called preference. So some of our users may not want to use our preset pages. So the preset pages, there’s 80 photos, 20 to a page, so four pages. And those are set up for an individual to be able to communicate immediate need, like pain level, headache, medicine, need to go to the bathroom, wanting a drink. So right away when someone downloads APP2Speak, they have the ability to communicate immediate needs. And not every user needs that. They want to use the text to speech or the custom feature. So the preference feature allows the individual to personalize when they turn on their app where they want to start. Do they want to start on the preset pages? Do they want to start on the text to speech? Do they want to start right on their custom pages? So it gives them the freedom to, I guess I could say, to personalize a little more how they’re going to use APP2Speak.

Oh, that’s awesome. And I love that they are able to personalize it and just make it easier. I mean we’re sitting here talking and as I think of something, I just say it, so the more you can make the app communicate in that way, it’s got to be great. And I also love the way that they can jump to pages, especially I’m sure for folks who use it a lot swiping from page one to page 20 had to be a royal pain. So it’s probably nice that you can just jump back and forth. And for folks with different mobility challenges, I’m sure that probably helps them with access as well.

Yes. And speaking of mobility challenges, APP2Speak is compatible with the accessibility features that are on the iPads. So for example, the touch accommodations, the magnifier for low vision, as well as Bluetooth switches.

Nice.

And in addition, another new feature that we added was on the text to speech feature we’ve added two displays for individuals who may have low vision, so that would help them navigate and use the text to speech feature, make it a little easier for them.

Gina, whenever I think about this, I kind of think about it in English of course, but what if the person isn’t an English speaker? Can they still use APP2Speak?

Yes, they can. On the iPad, they go to settings into the language and region, they can change it to their native language. So for example, they change it to Spanish. So when they go to the custom pages, they will have their Spanish keyboard and they would type in Spanish. They would title their personal photo in Spanish. The same thing with the text to speech feature, they would be typing their words in their native language, which is Spanish, and then the speech output would speak what they typed. The preset pages though will stay in English. They do not change, they are preset. But anyone who does not speak English, they can record their personalized voice on the custom pages.

Nice, very nice. And do you have users in other countries?

We do. We actually have users in 13 countries.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, you’ve got the great changes, it seems to keep growing. I always love to ask, are there changes you’re looking to make or add in the future that you’re allowed to tell us about?

We have several ideas on the back burner that we’re working towards. We are self-funded, so we are prioritizing what those features are going to be and then we are going to budget for them. But it’ll be more navigation type features that we’re thinking about adding.

Awesome, awesome. We’ll look forward to those in the future. While we’ve got a little bit of time here left, Gina, I know you probably have hundreds of these, but could you tell me a story or two just about someone’s success with communication using APP2Speak?

I do have several. I’ll start with this one. Two men up in the Northeast who are buddies for many, many years, one, I can say their names, Wayne is very techy, Bob is not. Bob had a scheduled laryngectomy, that’s where they removed the voice box, and they were being proactive and found APP2Speak. So Wayne was doing all the testing for Bob. And Bob bought it and had APP2Speak on his iPhone after he got out of surgery and immediately was able to communicate. And later they told me a story. He has it customized to the grocery store, the deli, real specific, because he’s still independent and able to shop. And he likes using the text to speech, and so when he meets someone he’s not familiar with, he has a pre-programed phrase that says, “Hi, my name is Bob. I lost my voice. But this is my assistant, Nancy, who is going to be talking for me.” And so it’s really cute and nice to hear when users reach out to us and tell these stories.

Nice. Well, and I’m sure that that helps break the ice for him because for folks who aren’t used to being around folks using AAC or kind of devices to talk for them, it could be a little daunting or you may not know what to say. So I love that he gave his personal assistant a name and kind of broke the ice, so I bet that really helps him when talking to new folks. We got a little bit of time left. Do you have another one you can share with us?

I do. I’m excited to say that I met personally in person last week a user here. I’m in St. Louis, Missouri, and I met an APP2Speak user, met him and his wife. His wife had a stroke about a year ago, which left her with some impairment of her speech. And so she uses APP2Speak app on her iPhone as kind of a stepping stone. Sometimes her speech is intelligible and sometimes not, so she uses it to supplement when her speech is not as clear. She is very social, she plays games, she has a group, a card group or game group, they played that game, Mahjong, and so she’s really social and doing well and it really was a thrill to me to actually meet somebody in person. It was great.

Sure, I’m sure you probably see the emails and the nice stories that people tell you, but it’s a little bit different when you actually get to see the work you do kind of in person and actually be to see that. So that is awesome. Well, Gina, if our listeners want to find out more about APP2Speak and APP2Speak Lite and all that stuff, what’s the best way for them to do that?

They can go to our website at app2speak.com. I’ll spell that. That’s Apple, Paul, Paul, the number 2, S as in Sam, P as in Paul, E as in Edward, A as in Apple, K as in Kite.com can also send an email to support@app2speak.com

And we will put both of those down in the show notes so that folks can easily access that and check it out. Well Gina, thank you so much for coming back on the show and telling us all the great things that APP2Speak can do, the new stuff, the folks that use it. But really we really do appreciate you coming on and telling us all about it.

Well thank you so much, Josh. I really appreciate being on the podcast. And everybody, you can reach out and give us a call or an email. And speaking of calling, you can call our office at (314) 631-7551

And we’ll add that down in the show notes as well. Take care, Gina.

All right, thank you.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @indataproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com.

A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.