The Best Apps for Students With Speech Difficulties

Many students will struggle with speech at some point during their development. Luckily, there are apps that can be very helpful for people facing speech difficulties, including students of all ages. There are options that can help them communicate without needing to speak as well as others that can be used to improve speech skills. If you're a student yourself, a teacher, or a school-based speech therapist, this list curates some very useful apps for students with speech difficulties.

Try These 6 Great Apps for Students

Spoken - Tap to Talk AAC

Availability: Android, iOS, and Mac
Price: Free (with optional premium upgrade for $12.99/month, $99.99/year, or $249.99 for life)

Spoken is an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app — a fancy way of saying it can assist with communication. It's an ideal choice for older students because it does not limit vocabulary to preset terms like most other AAC apps. Instead, it adapts to how the user talks and provides word suggestions based on that. This makes it ideal for users who need greater flexibility in their communication, like high schoolers or college students. It makes it easy to talk about things like your area of study, even if it requires niche words.

One feature of Spoken that students might find particularly helpful is its context-specific word predictions. With the “school” context chosen, users will receive predictions specific to a school setting. For example, if “I need a...” is entered, word predictions such as "pencil" and "pen" are quickly returned. The app can even switch to this setting automatically using location data. When you're outside of school, it's easy to switch back to the "everyday" context or any other one you would like to choose.

Leeloo AAC

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: Free (with optional premium upgrade for $6.99/month, $59.99/year, or $99.99 for life)

Leeloo is another AAC app, but one that's more suitable for younger students. While the vocabulary is too limiting for most teen and adult users, it has plenty of words available that are useful and relevant for children, including many related to school. It's also very easy to understand and operate, meaning the learning curve is small. Other AAC apps can be difficult to navigate and may require special training, whereas Leeloo is easy to get started with immediately.

Leeloo is especially good if a student has been resistant to using AAC. It's one of the most approachable and engaging AAC apps for users of this age, thanks to its playful design and fun illustrations. For this reason, it's an excellent starter option for beginning communicators. We also like that the app allows for multiple user profiles, which gives users a safe way to experiment with different settings and options.

Speech FlipBook

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: $9.99

Speech FlipBook by Tactus Therapy is an interactive, talking flipbook of sounds from the English language. It can help students target articulation, apraxia, reading skills, dysarthria, phonological awareness, and more. Like other Tactus Therapy apps, it's completely evidence-based and backed by research.

Comprehensive word lists can be generated of all single-syllable words that contain each sound or blend in each position of the word. The app will adapt and grow along with the student as their awareness and speech improve. Speech therapists and students like this app because it's very easy to use.

Conversation Therapy

Availability: Android and iOS
Price: $24.99

Conversation Therapy is another tool from the Tactus Therapy suite of apps. Tactus' other apps are mostly geared toward adults with aphasia, but this app is useful for all types of users, including students. It's great to use with a speech therapists to practice conversational skills. The app provides the conversation starters, which are structured yet natural. Many also include high quality pictures.

With over 2,500 questions across 12 real-world topic categories, Conversation Therapy can help students practice expressive language, problem-solving, and pragmatic skills. Another neat part of the app is that it allows for group use with up to four participants, which could be particularly useful in a school setting with multiple students.

Word Vault Pro

Availability: iOS
Price: $49.99

Word Vault Pro is a robust app that allows users to teach or learn articulation, language, and social skills. The app provides access to over 1800 high definition picture flashcards and over 25 categories with images or interactive activities. Additionally, audio snippets are available for words, phrases, sentences, stories, and questions. The customization features allow users to add custom words, phrases, pictures, and audio to any list.

One feature of World Vault Pro that is great for students is the ability to email any content to themselves for practice at home — an excellent option if the device they use the app on is owned by their school or speech therapist. Students can also practice and collaborate by downloading the free version of Word Vault on their own device.

Articulation Station Hive

Availability: iOS and Mac
Price: Free (with optional premium upgrade for $14.99/month or $119.99/year)

As the name of the app suggests, Articulation Station Hive is specifically designed to help students improve speech articulation. The included activities focus on different areas including syllables, words, phrases, stories, and conversations. Like Leeloo, Articulation Station Hive is an engaging app for younger students due to its playful design.

Articulation Station Hive is a great tool for school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) or speech therapists because it was created by a fellow SLP and has an abundance of clinician-friendly features. For instance, it's easy to view summaries of sessions and graphs of student performance, write or view notes, and share users' progress with their family.

Don't Let Problems With Speech Interfere With School

Students facing speech difficulties have plenty of options when it comes to tools that can assist them with communication. From augmentative and alternative communication options that can help students communicate when in need to various speech therapy tools, there are all kinds of powerful apps available on the market. Students, teachers, and speech therapists should check out the apps on this list to see how they can help.