Features

Spoken has many unique and powerful features that make it stand out from other augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) apps or devices. Looking for something in particular? This is a comprehensive list of everything Spoken currently has to offer.

Predictions

Spoken offers advanced predictive text that can guess the words you want to say. It learns from your speech patterns and gives better suggestions the more you use it.

• Personalized Predictions: You can teach Spoken basic information about yourself, such as the names of the people and places you interact with the most so that it will begin suggesting those names.
• Contextual Predictions: Spoken can adapt its suggestions to your location — if you're somewhere like a restaurant or hospital, it will provide more relevant predictions for those contexts. For example, words like “appetizers,” “dessert,” and “drinks” are more likely to appear when you visit a restaurant if this feature is enabled in settings. The currently supported contexts are eating, shopping, medical, and school.
• Add Words: Although Spoken will naturally learn any words you type repeatedly, you can also directly add them to predictions with the Add Words option in settings. By default, Spoken already knows over 60,000 words.

Unlike the built-in predictive text on your smartphone or tablet, Spoken offers a scrollable list of suggestions paired with icons for quick recognition.

Communication

Beyond next-word predictions, Spoken offers three additional methods of input: typing, writing, and drawing. All three inputs interact with the predictions to make entering text more intuitive. They can also be converted directly to speech.

Saved Phrases

Once you've written something, you can also save it for later use in the easily accessible saved phrases menu.

For added flexibility, you can leave the end of a saved phrase blank and complete it later, using whichever input method you prefer. Saved phrases can also be reordered so your most important phrases are always on top.

Natural-Sounding Voices

Spoken offers a wide selection of natural-sounding voices covering a variety of accents and identities. The pitch, speed, and volume of all voices can be customized to better reflect individual users.

The Attention Button

Spoken's attention button allows users to alert caregivers or other listeners with a single tap. This can be extremely useful in emergency situations, or just for grabbing someone's attention, as the name implies. The button will make the device's flashlight blink and play a short noise, both of which can be customized from the settings menu.

By holding down on the speak button, you can select "Alert & Speak", which will perform both actions back-to-back. This can be made the default behavior of the speak button in settings so that the alert always plays before speaking.

Symbol Library

Spoken features a large and growing library of icons that are paired with its word predictions to make it faster for users to locate the words they need. Each icon in the library is carefully designed to help users easily grasp the meaning of the words they represent. They are minimal and less distracting than many other AAC symbols.

Accessibility Features

Spoken comes with additional accessibility features for users who might need them.

• Large Print
• Dark Mode
• Word Dividers

Other

• Share: Quickly send what you've written in Spoken as text or audio via email, instant messages, social media, and more.
• Show Large: Display your message at full screen for showing to someone else, especially in high noise environments.
• Block Words: Choose words that you don't want to appear in your predictions.

Upcoming Features

Spoken is frequently updated to add new features and improve on existing ones. We take user feedback into account with every update. If you want to reach out to us with suggestions for features, please use the contact form in the app's settings menu or email us. We'd be happy to hear from you!