New member looking for communication help for poorly mum?

[charlotte17797]

Hi all,

New to the site so good evening to everyone I have a problem and wonder whether anyone could solve for me or at least point me in the right direction please? My mum is suffering from Bulbar Palsy which is progressive and terminal form of Motor Neurone Disease. This has robbed her of her voice completely and she is having to write on a notepad to communicate in any way. We have heard that there are apps for IPad that have programmes for text to speech and also that a new swype text app has been developed. If this is the case mum could possibly use an IPad as a communication device but I am not sure where to get these and also if they will work together. Did Google the swype text and it said that it will only open in notepad and doesnt work with anything else? Is this true or was that an old post and has it been developed further? If anyone could help I would be so very grateful, she has young grandchildren who cannot understand the writing so she can no longer talk to them.

Heres hoping someone has the knowledge!

Thanks

Charlotte

 

[hpulmer]

Hi all,

New to the site so good evening to everyone I have a problem and wonder whether anyone could solve for me or at least point me in the right direction please? My mum is suffering from Bulbar Palsy which is progressive and terminal form of Motor Neurone Disease. This has robbed her of her voice completely and she is having to write on a notepad to communicate in any way. We have heard that there are apps for IPad that have programmes for text to speech and also that a new swype text app has been developed. If this is the case mum could possibly use an IPad as a communication device but I am not sure where to get these and also if they will work together. Did Google the swype text and it said that it will only open in notepad and doesnt work with anything else? Is this true or was that an old post and has it been developed further? If anyone could help I would be so very grateful, she has young grandchildren who cannot understand the writing so she can no longer talk to them.

Heres hoping someone has the knowledge!

Thanks

Charlotte

Dear Charlotte,
Very sorry to hear about the communication problems between your mum and her garndchildren.
The iapad has a native option to read out automatically selected text. You can find it in the settings - general. Don't know how to translate the items in the settings, so I just attach screenshots.







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[skimonkey]

Hi there...so sorry for your Mother's condition of motor neuron disease.

Please see this thread regarding Apps for Nonverbals...this may be very helpful for your mom with simple text to speech commands:
http://www.ipadforums.net/apps-special-needs/72601-app-non-verbal-adults.html

Also, Hpulmer has given you some very good information.

In addition to this...please see this tutorial that one of our Super Moderators put together for Voice Over: http://www.ipadforums.net/help-ipad...2320-how-guide-using-voiceover-ios-5-1-a.html

Hope this helps...and BTW...Welcome to the Forum!

I am going to move this to the Special Needs Forum for better attention...

 

[goofy8275]

Hi all,

New to the site so good evening to everyone I have a problem and wonder whether anyone could solve for me or at least point me in the right direction please? My mum is suffering from Bulbar Palsy which is progressive and terminal form of Motor Neurone Disease. This has robbed her of her voice completely and she is having to write on a notepad to communicate in any way. We have heard that there are apps for IPad that have programmes for text to speech and also that a new swype text app has been developed. If this is the case mum could possibly use an IPad as a communication device but I am not sure where to get these and also if they will work together. Did Google the swype text and it said that it will only open in notepad and doesnt work with anything else? Is this true or was that an old post and has it been developed further? If anyone could help I would be so very grateful, she has young grandchildren who cannot understand the writing so she can no longer talk to them.

Heres hoping someone has the knowledge!

Thanks

Charlotte

Sorry about your mom. In Settings, scroll down and click Accessibility. Click Speak selection. Tap the switch to turn it on. You can adjust the speech rate. Select some text to speak, hold down your finger on it, and select "speak." a nice free text to speech app is iSpeech Text To Speech. You can type in text and click speak to speak the text. You can even choose different accents and voices. I highly recommend this app.
Hope this helps!

 

[charlotte17797]

Thanks Hpulmer, screen shots are really useful will take a look at it later. Help much appreciated!

Thanks
Charlotte

 

[charlotte17797]

Thanks Skimonkey, will have a look at the tutorial later on (off to work for now) and yes Hpulmer has been very helpful too. I agree moving to the special needs forum might be better, not something I have done before so wasnt sure where to post. In fact.... I posted twice as once I had submitted I couldnt find it as I wasnt sure where I had posted it too lol!

Thank you so much.

Charlotte

 

[charlotte17797]

Hi Goofy,

Will this app today, there are a few but wasnt sure which one was the best. I will have a look at the one in accessibility too but I think she needs something that has more predictive text too to cut down on how long it takes her to write something and then click speak.

Thank you so much for your help.

Charlotte

 

[hpulmer]

Hi Goofy,

Will this app today, there are a few but wasnt sure which one was the best. I will have a look at the one in accessibility too but I think she needs something that has more predictive text too to cut down on how long it takes her to write something and then click speak.

Thank you so much for your help.

Charlotte

Accessability - that's the word I was searching for - my screenshots are about that.
Using the native text-to-speech you could have pre-written phrases in the notes-app from where she could select the text she wants to be spoken without having to type it first. The notes app could contain several notes with thematically related phrases together... and in case a phrase is not yet there she could simply type it in and have it said (and keep it written)...

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