Australian voices and vocab!

Avaz is a full featured Australianised App app for iPad, providing word and symbol based communication vocabulary in addition to text-to-speech message generation.

For more information please head to www.avazapp.com

Avaz can be purchased through the App store or Google store. 

This vocabulary was developed in collaboration with 25 schools and 500 children. Avaz invited Zyteq to collaborate to develop eht eAustralian version. This involved around 1000 additions or amendments to include common Australian vocabulary, verb forms and expressions.

While Avaz is well known for use with people with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the App is also useful for people with many other diagnoses.  This App provides the funtionality to generate messages by combining words to form phrases and sentences.  In addition literacy development is addressed through the inclusion of the text-to-speech facility.  Human voice can be recorded and photos included.  It is an "all-round' app with a very eppealing presentation.

Features:

• NEW feature: print a low-tech version of AVAZ (watch the one minute video - see DETAILS tab)
• supplied with a symbol library of 15,000+ symbolstix
• import your own photographs to label keys
• track sessions if you choose to activate this feature
• option to share messages on social media 
• back-up and restore using Dropbox
• option to display symbols in message box
• layout  - 1 or 2 large cells, 3, 4, 8, 15 or 24 picture cells
• text on cell - 3 font sizes
• color coding can be used or not as required
• zoom on select can be used to enlarge the selected cell
• the starting page can be varied to suit the user
• auto-home can be selected to return to home page after each selection if required
• a wide vocabulary is already set up ready for use
• edit mode permits full customisation, new pages, new categories, and edit of individual cells.
• clean, uncluttered presentation
• intuitive to use and edit
• search feature - to locate a vocab item
• keyboard  - ABC or QWERTY layout options
• Keyboard - word prediction
• keyboard - word prediction with symbols or words only
• voices Australian male and femail (Lisa and Tyler), also British, American and Indian English voices supplied
• speed of speech output can be adjusted
• speech can be set to speak each character as typed - or not as required
• action keys can speak  or not - as required
• password optionmaintain picture location if required

Language development through picture vocabulary

Children with autism have difficulties in communication, stemming from difficulties with generalization and language acquisition. Avaz is unique because it doesn’t just facilitate communication through speech – it encourages children to acquire reusable words and have real conversations.
Avaz has 3 graded, research-based vocabulary sets, with over 5,000 core and peripheral words, organized into intuitive categories. The vocabulary is exhaustive and color-coded linguistically, to assist language development.
Avaz has a unique system of surrounding words with ‘conversation starters’, so that they can be used in sentences quickly and effortlessly. Quick words gives access to quick responses. They can even form sentences through the use of Core words, which can be accessed with a single tap from any screen. By building and speaking sentences with Avaz, children can communicate their thoughts, and also learn to generalize the usage of words, accelerating language development.

Multi-sensory reinforcement

Reinforcement serves to maintain the attention of the child, and keep them focused on language use and development. That’s why Avaz features reinforcement through images, zoom-in animations, word spellings, speech and sentence-building. And because different children have different sensory preferences, each of these reinforcements can be turned on or off selectively. A child with autism may stimulation through multiple senses in order to enhance attention, cognition and participation.

Quick Customization

As a therapist or parent using Avaz to help a child with autism communicate better, you’d rather focus on the conversation instead of programming an app. That’s why we made Avaz up to 80% faster to customize than other AAC apps.You can add a new word, or change the image for an existing one, in less than 15 seconds! You can also personalize Avaz by taking photographs or choosing from your image library, in addition to choosing from over 15,000 in-built symbols. You can even customize the pronunciation of unusual words and names, so that Avaz sounds just right.

Record your own voice using the Audio recording feature, to personalize the voice that the child hears from the spoken messages.

Avaz, believes in David Yoder’s quote: “No student is too anything to be able to read and write” Using alphabet and language is a desired goal for literacy. Avaz has features that allow a structured, gradual move towards using text. You can use Avaz to promote sight-reading, by gradually decreasing the size of an image relative to its caption, or deactivating the symbol all together to encourage focus on the text. The child can also switch seamlessly between picture and keyboard modes while constructing a message.

For early text users, the Avaz keyboard has a novel picture-prediction; a child can see pictures of predicted words after typing just one or two initial letters.

The Avaz keyboard also has many features for children already familiar with text, such as saving and loading sentences, powerful word and phrase predictions, and a quick response bar.

Color coded vocabulary, Share from Avaz, Integrated Pictures & Keyboard, Pre-loaded conversation topics

Avaz can grow with the child – it provides features that facilitate a smooth transition from pictures to keyboard – through a gradual fading of pictures, varying sizes of captions and sight reading.

The integrated picture and keyboard mode aids a more proficient AAC user to quickly compose his message, by allowing him to alternate between the modes seamlessly, to choose the mode most appropriate for his words.

Avaz is also suitable for children with fine motor difficulties. Avaz has arrow keys to scroll up and down to prevent scrolling of the page through accidental swiping of the screen

You can also use Avaz for children requiring consistent motor patterns – it has settings that retain consistent layouts of icons as you add or disable vocabulary.

Improves therapist productivity
As a therapist, you will love the value addition offered by Avaz, as it optimizes your time by providing many useful and timesaving features. If you are new to Avaz, you can get quickly get started with Avaz after going through the in-app guide of Avaz.

Avaz tracks therapy sessions automatically in the background, while you are working with the child. This saves time for making copious notes during or after therapy, and allows you to focus on your therapy instead.

You can now backup your entire Avaz content on a regular basis, without losing any of the previous changes in the event of an accidental deletion. You can save your backup on the cloud by linking to Dropbox, which safeguards the content, even if you change your device. You can synchronize your Avaz content by signing-in to your Dropbox account on multiple iPads.

Avaz also has a powerful Search feature to instantly locate any word in the dictionary and also access that page in a single tap.

To Purchase:

• Only available to purchase from the Apple store or Google Store.
• Monthly purchase is a useful way to try. 

How to create a printed version of AVAZ