The Power of AAC Apps for Android (and Apple) Devices: A Customer Story about APP2Speak
Usually, I use this space to share information that’s helpful to our target audience—people who cannot speak for one reason or another (traumatic brain injury, disease, degenerative condition, etc.)
But from time to time, I hear from one of our customers directly, and the story is just too good not to share with the world…so that’s what I’m doing today.
I was recently introduced to one of our APP2Speak users (Bob) through a customer service inquiry from his best friend, Wayne.
As you’ll see in a moment, they were researching android communication apps with text to speech capabilities. And while text to speech apps for iPad and iPhone are common, there are fewer available options when it comes to AAC apps for android devices.
Anyway, it would be better if I just let Wayne tell the story…
Gina, I just want to thank you and your support team for all your help and most of all, for creating APP2speak.
I discovered APP2speak after my best friend Bob, (we’ve been like brothers for 60 years) was diagnosed with throat cancer and was told he had to have a laryngectomy and he would lose his voice.
He’s not as technical as I am and asked me to try and find something that would allow him to communicate with his mobile phone once he became speech impaired. He wanted to be able to text his words and have his phone speak them out for face-to-face communication.
After searching the web for something that might work for him, I kept seeing APP2speak pop up. I went on the website, and it looked like it would be helpful.
I contacted customer support, and that’s when you helped so much.
You let me download the 14-day full app trial to my android phone. Once we figured out a couple of glitches that Android apps on my phone were causing, we were off and running.
The two features of the app, text-to-speech and the photo-based pages with their phrases, and the ability to create custom pages and phrases was amazing!
Bob purchased the app (worth every penny) and we began practicing with each other until he was comfortable with using it before his surgery.
The best part about this story is when Bob had his surgery at Tuffs Medical Center in Boston, he woke up from recovery and was able to communicate with the medical staff immediately. The nurses were amazed and had never seen the app before. They took the information down for future patients.
Not only could he text his words to speech, but he found the preloaded photo pages to be extremely helpful!
Now that he’s home, he uses the app every day. He has his custom pages set up for everything from the supermarket to an emergency call photo with critical emergency information.
This app is truly a life changing tool!
Again, I want to thank you.
Wayne
Isn’t that wonderful? It just warms my heart whenever someone shares the impact that APP2Speak has had on their life or the life of a loved one!
These are the kinds of stories that make all the time I spend marketing and talking about APP2Speak worth every second.
By the way, here’s a quick update on Bob and Wayne’s story: Wayne called me about a week after Bob’s surgery to tell me he’s doing great and using the app in the community—for example, at the grocery store, church, etc. Also, they each bought an iPhone since the surgery because it’s a more robust phone (and they both needed an upgrade to their android phones). So, Bob purchased APP2speak for his new iPhone. Moral of the story: Bob loved APP2Speak so much, he bought it twice!
Do you have a story about how APP2Speak has impacted your life or the life of someone close to you? If so, I’d love to hear from you.
Just shoot me an email at gbaldwin@app2speak.com.