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You asked and we listened…introducing the new TouchChat® Discover app! TouchChat Discover’s risk-free, 30-day trial allows you to experience everything our popular TouchChat app has to offer, giving you valuable time to evaluate if it’s the right solution for your communication journey.

“Our mission at PRC-Saltillo is to ensure that individuals are able to effectively communicate and interact in their environment,” commented Sarah Wilds, VP, Product & Service Development. “With the addition of TouchChat Discover to our family of apps, WordPower® and other “Chat” vocabularies will be able to reach even more customers who use AAC."

TouchChat Discover is an invaluable resource and we’re so excited to be offering access to a trial of our top AAC app FREE for the first time ever! Perfect for parents interested in exploring AAC for their child, for speech-language pathologists searching for the right communication solution for their clients, and for teachers looking for a resource to help their students who lack verbal communication skills, TouchChat Discover is a powerful communication tool for a variety of situations.

 How to Start Your Free 30-Day TouchChat Trial

Step 1

Download TouchChat Discover from the App Store®.

Step 2

After downloading, you’ll have the option to start a free 30-day trial OR to use WordPower96 English and Spanish lite-tech boards.

Step 3

When your 30-day trial ends, you’ll have the option to purchase TouchChat HD w/WordPower, TouchChat HD or TouchChat HD Lite without needing to download a separate app. If you don’t make a purchase, you’ll only have access to the WordPower96 English and Spanish lite-tech boards. Please be aware that after an upgrade, the app’s icon will update to the option chosen, but “TouchChat DS” will still be the app name that appears under the icon.

An industry-leading iOS-based AAC app, TouchChat has easy-to-customize features and a wide range of vocabularies, languages, and voices. Its intuitive design gives individuals who have difficulty using their natural voice the ability to communicate with the world around them using the familiarity of an iPad®, iPad mini®, iPhone® or iPod touch®.

Powerful Communication Backed by Helpful Support

With a downloadable TouchChat Manual & Quick Reference Guide, live online training for a variety of topics, consultant-led recorded webinars for on-demand learning, and support articles full of detailed how-to’s and troubleshooting tips, we provide the support you need for success. Easily submit trouble tickets online at www.prc-saltillo.com/support-request for timely support and convenient status updates or email any support-related questions to support@touchchatapp.com.

Get accelerated help during regular business hours using LiveChat or a toll-free phone number when you subscribe to one of our premium support plans. For U.S. TouchChat sales only.

Update to TouchChat 2.36.0

• - With this software update, you’ll notice the following:Integration of Acapela’s my-own-voice service that allows you to create a synthetic voice using your own voice
• - A variety of library changes including a Spanish translation for directions in the “Writing to Apps” page and a new WordPower25 Español file that is comparable to the content and design of the English WordPower25

Did You Know?

The TouchChat app is also available on our funded iOS speech-generating devices, the Via® Pro, or TouchChat Express, making the TouchChat Discover app a great way to try out the software before starting the funding process. U.S. residents may qualify to have one of these devices partially or fully funded by private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, or a combination of these sources.

New features in the 2.35 Chat Software update are designed to make using and customizing your NovaChat® easier. Be sure to watch the video to see what’s new! 

SOFTWARE FEATURES 

Hide Mode

• If the “Show Hidden Buttons” setting in enabled in the Application Settings, you will receive a pop-up notification if you try to turn on Hide Mode while editing the vocabulary. This will help to alleviate any confusion when using Hide Mode to customize the vocabulary.

Menu Lock

• This feature has also been updated to be easier to lock and unlock access to the Chat Menu. In previous software versions, whenever the Menu was locked or unlocked, a pop-up notification appeared asking if Kiosk Mode should be enabled or disabled as well. This often-caused confusion and sometimes led to other apps and features being accessed when that was not intended. Now, when locking or unlocking the Menu, it is not an option to enable to disable kiosk mode at the same time.  

WORDPOWER® VOCABULARY FEATURES: 

 WordPower 25 Touch and Scan

• - Updated to include early books. Read along and engage with the AAC learner using these early books pages to build communication and literacy skills!
• - Keyboard redesigned to contain only 25 buttons per page, aligning with the rest of the vocabulary and making it easier for individuals using a keyguard to access the keyboard.
• - Phonics keyboard containing only 25 buttons per page added as another way to support literacy development. If you wish to use this phonics keyboard, you will need to edit the button to go to this new 25-location phonics keyboard.

 Writing to Apps page

• Copying text to other apps is easier than ever with the addition of this page. Found on the Groups page, the WRITING to APPS page lets you copy and paste messages in the speech display bar to a number of different applications. Simply create the message, navigate to the WRITING to APPS page, select the desired app, and paste the message.

 New words in WordPower vocabularies

• - In all vocabularies (except WordPower20), you will now find several science themed words: include: conclude, experiment, observe, and predict.
• - The word “another” has been added to the WordPower60 Basic vocabulary in the Extra Words category.

Update Today!

Important Software Compatibility Information

The database for software update 2.34 has been updated, meaning that your NovaChat and ChatEditor must be in the same software version to make file transfers. So, make sure both your device and ChatEditor are running the 2.34 software so you can access the following new features.

Select Skin Tone for Individual Buttons

In this update, you are now able to change the skin tone for individual buttons! This is a great feature to create a diverse vocabulary file but still be representative of people in your AAC learner's life!

Learn More!

Change Pronunciation for Individual Buttons

Another feature added at the button level is being able to change pronunciations for individual buttons. This can be useful for names and words like wind (like the air) and wind (like a clock). 

Let's Take a Look!

A New Way to Print Pages from Your Vocabulary in ChatEditor

Now in ChatEditor, you can save the page as an image or .png file to your computer! This allows you to copy and paste the image into a document and change the size of the image to your liking.

See it in Action!

New in WordPower®

WordPower80

• Core vocabulary added to category pages - you can now say anything you want from the core vocabulary pages OR the category pages.
• QWERTY keyboard available in category pages – in addition to core vocabulary, access to the QWERTY keyboard on category pages allows for this easy generation of language.
• Early Books added - these books pages from WordPower60 Basic have been added to the vocabulary and can be found on the reading page.

All English WordPower Files

• Verbs “lick,” “squeeze,” “text,” and “exit” have been added
• “Fire” and “water” have been added to the nature page

 Check ‘Em Out!

Watch the entire 2.34 Chat Software Update here or jump to certain sections above!

by Patrick Fothergill, Ontario AAC Consultant & SLP

As an AAC-focused SLP with connections to Quebec and northern & eastern Ontario, among other places, I often hear from people seeking French speech-generating devices (SGDs). And while they exist, until recently I didn’t think there was anything for folks whose abilities & needs suit a robust, picture-supported, predictive (and therefore selection-saving) language system.

Enter Nancy Inman, the veteran SLP behind WordPower. When she heard about this gap, she dusted off her university French and, in collaboration with some first-language-French speakers, intrepidly set about bridging it.

“What’s the big deal,” you might say, “just translate English WordPower.  Sure, it’ll take a while, but most of the hard work is already done, right?”

If only it were so simple! As Nancy can tell you, the French language works differently enough from English that straight translation of anything beyond a keyboard and pre-stored messages is impossible. For example, English verbs have a maximum of 6 forms in total, whereas some French verbs have as many as 6 forms in a single tense—and at least 5 basic tenses!*

Plus, a word in one language often doesn’t conveniently match up to just one word in another. As English speakers who’ve tried to learn Spanish know, “to be” translates as ser or estar, depending what you’re using it for. And French may be even ‘worse’ for English speakers: for instance, it lacks anything equivalent to the English “out”…and consider how often we use that core word, especially with early language (and therefore AAC) learners!

So it’s remarkable that, in a couple of intense years, Nancy published not one but two essentially brand-new French page sets—WordPower60 français and WordPower120 français—that nevertheless feel familiar to WordPower jockeys. The first new French WordPower in decades, the first ever with picture support, and the only ones to run on modern SGDs, they incorporate almost all the conveniences people appreciate in modern English WordPower for NovaChat & TouchChat such as logical next words, word completion, category-based vocabulary including core words, etc.

And with the arrival of the Via Pro, people for whom touch isn’t an option and for whom switch scanning is too slow or frustrating can choose a fully-vendor-backed SGD that makes these files accessible through head tracking. Or if someone needs a bilingual system, WordPower60 français is built to resemble the popular WordPower60 Basic for NovaChat & TouchChat, and you can easily link them together using these platforms’ Profiles function.

So French-speaking AAC communities, take note: there’s a new kid on the block!

To find out more about WordPower60 français & WordPower120 français, be sure to check out our videos and/or contact your local Saltillo/NovaChat consultant.

Watch with English Captions:

Watch with French Captions: