The iPod Touch and iPhone are amazing assistive technology tools. There are many free applications as well as ones that cost as little as $10.00 all the way to $150.00 that can be use for communication and visual schedules. Proloquo2Go is a full-feature AAC software available for approximatley $150.00. It has a large library of symbols, natural sounding speech, functions of language for sentence construction, and typing view for typing paragraphs. On the other end, there is iConverse, a $10.00 program that lets you load your own photos (or screen shots of Boardmaker symbols) and assign text to the symbol that can be spoken aloud. The speech is more robotic sounding and there is less flexibility for programming, but it is $10.00 and it is a nice beginning step. Or, this is a great option for someone who needs visual prompts or schedules or a portable communication system so they dont' have to carry a larger device around in the community. I'm using this as an evaluation tool for my students before investing in additional applications. One of the snags I've run into with the iTunes store is their complete unwillingness to deal with tax exempt purchases. Public schools are tax exempt; however after lenghty discussion with many people at iTunes (from phone calls to online chats and emails)it is apparent that they don't understand or want to provide their products to tax exempt organizations. My last interaction with them ended with the statement "our products are designed for personal end use only". - I guess that means they don't want to sell to businesses, agencies, schools? Be creative and find a way around it, it's worth it.
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