Working as speech therapists, we understand how time-consuming it is to make quality AAC resources and how difficult it is to find easy to use and high quality resources without paying a fortune! So instead of you doing all the hard work, we’ve done it for you and compiled our top 10 free AAC resources and websites. These are things that we actually use in our day to day practice with actual clients to actually support their communication!
- The ACE Centre: https://acecentre.org.uk/ ACE centre is a registered charity with funding from NHS England specifically to support people with the most complex communication difficulties. They have a great set of free resources – all you have to do is sign up and download! Our personal favourites are the listener mediated scanning book and for speech therapists the Pragmatics Profile for People who use AAC is an absolute must have for assessments.
- Communication Matters: https://www.communicationmatters.org.uk/ – another fantastic charity who do amazing work in lobbying for the rights of people with communication difficulties. We absolutely love their set of free leaflets with step by step instructions on how to use certain devices and low-tech AAC.
- Talking Mats: https://www.talkingmats.com/projects/free-stuff-communication-disability/ – if you haven’t heard of Talking Mats, look it up! It’s a truly amazing way to support people to communicate and be involved in decisions about their lives, something which is often overlooked when you have difficulties with communication. They have tonnes of free symbol sets and a free app!
- Project Core: http://www.project-core.com/ – this is all about the Core Vocabulary approach, which we definitely want to cover in a future blog post! There’s tonnes of free resources AND full free training in the Core Vocab approach. They have a huge variety of different symbol boards with all the core vocab on – from 4 symbols on a page right up to the full 36 symbols and you can even get the STL files to print them in 3D!
- Easy on the i: https://www.learningdisabilityservice-leeds.nhs.uk/easy-on-the-i/ – created by the Learning Disability Service at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. They made a full free set of symbols to help make accessible resources, communication books and leaflets. ALL FREE! I love the ethos behind this because how can information be made accessible if the software or symbols to create it are so inaccessibly priced?! And they have come up with an amazing solution and a truly great resource.
- Amy’s Speech and Language Therapy: https://www.amyspeechlanguagetherapy.com/communication-boards.html – Amy’s speech and language therapy have loads of free AAC resources. Our personal favourite is the hospital board for when people desperately need a voice to advocate for their health, but they are at their most vulnerable!
- Makaton website: I love using Makaton and think of it as the often forgotten about form of “no tech” AAC. The website is brilliant and although you do have to pay for the Core Vocabulary, they do provide tonnes of free Makaton resources such as a “Sign of the week” on their website. All you have to do is sign up for a free account! Check out the free resources at https://makaton.org/TMC/Free_resources/TMC/Free_resources_.aspx?hkey=195b178e-78f1-4757-94a2-326a83afd84f.
- ClaraCom is a fabulous free text to speech app for people who can still read and write, but have trouble speaking. It is fully personalisable as you are able to add your contacts and your favourite phrases. It uses the iOS keyboard and predictive text to help make typing easier. Again, the downside unfortunately is that the voice cannot be changed from the standard iOS voice. If you are a professional (such as a speech and language therapist), instead of ClaraCom, you can register with Speak Unique on their website to build your own banked voice (for free!) and then use their free text to speech app to show it off. This is great for demonstrating to people what a banked voice can sound like and trying out a text to speech app.
- Let Me Talk is a free symbol based voice output app. We prefer it over the free Grid app (as brilliant as it is) because it can be so perfectly personalised to each person. Some people can find the symbols childish, but you can easily change the symbols for photographs. The only thing I wish I could change is the voice!
- Whiteboard app: Ask anyone what I always advocate that every single speech therapist has in their kit and it will always be the humble whiteboard! I love using whiteboards for so many reasons – they are great for using to write down key words and drawings to support the conversation, for explaining complex information (e.g. about dysphagia) or to give choices for questions. There is a free whiteboard app that is brilliant. Everyone I have worked with has always enjoyed the use of the whiteboard and have often joined in using it themselves to give information – somebody told me about the boat they owned in Cornwall just by drawing on the whiteboard app!
