Show HN: Vocable – open-source app that helps those who can't speak

Show HN: Vocable – open-source app that helps those who can't speak(github.com)

61 points by smolPotat 5 years ago | 10 comments

smolPotat 5 years ago |

This is an open source application that helps people who can't speak communicate with others. I posted the Android github, but it's also an iOS project. Along with development help, we also need help translating this app.

website: http://vocable.app/ iOS Github: https://github.com/willowtreeapps/vocable-ios

happycry 5 years ago | |

This looks incredible! I come across people who are trying to use our service (speech synthesis) and are looking for a complementary services like this all the time. The closest thing I've come to recommend is https://talktablet.com/.

nepeckman 5 years ago | |

Cool to see AAC trending on hacker news! My wife is an SLP so the speech language/tech intersection is a point of interest for us. If I may ask: how did you source contributions from SLPs?

smolPotat 5 years ago | | |

We call around and get SLPs advice and contributions! We haven't been able to get them more recently, but we're still looking :D

feiss 5 years ago | |

looks amazing, congrats! I was going to contribute with the Spanish translation, but I see you already have it :)

capableweb 5 years ago |

Really cool, great work!

Only weird thing I feel is the video. For being an application all about empowering people to be able to "say" stuff without speaking, it doesn't have a lot of demonstration of it actually being used for communicating with people. Most of the time there is music in the background, otherwise it's just a short section of the video with what results you can expect from the app, or people who can actually speak saying something.

Keverw 5 years ago |

Interesting, remember seeing a thing on 60 minutes one day randomly flipping channels about non verbal with autism using iPad's to talk. A cool use of tech! Open source is cool too, I know some of these apps are 100 to a few hundred dollars.

Wasn't expecting it could be controlled with head movements. Kinda reminds me that once I was thinking It would be cool if some way tech could read your mind but I don't know if that'd work well and probably could be used for bad. haha. I'm a horrible speller. Then also I feel I can think out code faster than I can type it - so that'd be cool if you could just stare at a screen, click your mouse somewhere and just think code and it writes it.

acrefoot 5 years ago |

The Vimeo video says that spinal cord injury affects ~300,000 people in the US, and also says that's 2% of the population. Is that percentage referring to something else, or is that a typo?

szaroubi 5 years ago |

Have you had experience with non verbal autistic children ? Would you say this app is geared toward that persona (sorry to reduce it a persona)? if not, would you know what is missing ?

smolPotat 5 years ago | |

This app is for anyone that needs it, and we're happy to make changes to it so that more people can use it. We've been told that a way to add pictures would be nice, and we'd love to add that feature in. We're focusing on words and sentences right now just because it's something that isn't widely available.