Grace is a non-speaking exchange system created for people with autism to make their needs known independently. Users of this app can choose pictures to form a semantic sentence and share it by tilting the iPhone or iPod touch to get a full-screen view and then pointing at every card and watching as the listener read each word. 

Website: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id360574688

What Users Love About the App

“The Grace app is a well designed, user friendly application. I really enjoyed playing around with it. It is very easy to use! Many people forget that it is not about how many features an aac app can offer, but it is about finding an aac app that meets the needs of the student.”

“Love that pictures (& pictures of symbols or words) can be added into any category. Also the ability to arrange the pictures within the category is great. I hope future updates will allow me to add my own categories, and will increase the number of items that can be chosen in one series.”

“I can say that the App Description is perfectly clear , and adding more content into the Grace app is quite simple , I was able to add 12 folder sets via iTunes photo sharing and expanded my Grace iconography to contain hundreds of new special needs requests , and whatever image I don’t have , I can get it on Google Image Search.”

“I highly recommend this app that helps children communicate. A must for Speech Language Pathologists, Special Education, Autism, teachers, parents and siblings will find this Augmentative Alternative Communication app useful. Megan Bratti, MS, CCC-SLP”

“Still the best app for those looking for a “true” PECS communication system for their iDevice. Lots of flexibility and perfect for those individuals with Autism just starting to find their own voice.”

What Users Dislike About the App

“Yet this is not that app. It is far too limited for real-life use, it shows promise but after several months of waiting for new releases with useful features I am afraid this is simply a dead end product with no merit to it. Do not buy this for your autistic child. Unfortunately I cannot recommend any other tool either, but this tool is ridiculously limited.”

“I can’t believe the price for this. All it does is display images from a TINY library, or the images that you upload. Only ONE level of categorization, existing categories are arbitrary, no labeling, no audio, no recall of image strings that you make, once you set an image string you can’t re-arrange. WHY does it cost 38 bucks???”

“The app is set up similar to the Pecs system from Pyramid with the categories and a sentence strip. The issues are that the categories you see on the sample page is it. There are 8 categories and in each category there are about 12 pictures (only one page of images). You cannot add more images to those categories. You can add you own pictures but they are all lumped into their own category and you cannot separate.”

“Removed immediately there is no sound, the pictures are too small for those with vision problems and the listening partner has to read what is being expressed instead of being able to hear it and respond more quickly and naturally to the person’s request. My daughter got so upset because she kept trying to get it to “talk”.”

“If this app were free, I think it would be mildly useful, but paying any money, let alone $38.00(!) is criminal, and I would like a complete and total refund (from the developer or from iTunes). If you enjoy paying that kind of money for something one could probably do with about 15 minutes of flash-type programing, then by all means, support these people.”