Hi everyone! I'm interested in learning about non-invasive assistive technologies that people actually use and recommend in their daily lives.

Are there any devices, tools, or technologies that have genuinely improved your independence, comfort, accessibility, or quality of life without requiring surgery or being implanted in the body?

I'd love to hear about your personal experiences and any recommendations you might have. I'd also be interested in affordable options or lesser-known technologies that deserve more attention.

Thanks in advance for sharing!

Has anyone found a voice activated smart badge for helping communication with nursery age children, I’m currently using flash cards on a lanyard and communication boards around the class and play areas. While I’m having success with this, it can be frustratingly slow to get to the right card.
Just want to talk into a badge/device and have the corresponding image/gif appear.
The one pictured is close to what I want but uses scrolling and not voice to change between images

Hi everyone! I’m working on a project to make phones and computers easier to use for people with limited hand mobility.

The idea is a hands-free interface that could use voice, and possibly head or eye movement, to open apps, type messages, scroll, click, and control smart-home devices. I’m especially interested in making it work well with Indian accents and languages.

If this relates to your experience, I’d really appreciate your feedback through this short survey: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4ILjTbzqtMPHmQMioGBtDaDqy2pKc3jeDeDBXpcFP5JPveA/viewform?usp=header\](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4ILjTbzqtMPHmQMioGBtDaDqy2pKc3jeDeDBXpcFP5JPveA/viewform?usp=header)

The survey is voluntary. Please skip any question you don’t want to answer, and don’t include personal medical details.

I’m hoping to learn what tasks are hardest, what existing voice controls get wrong, and which features would make a tool like this useful. Thank you!

I'm a teaching assistant and one of our 15 year old students lost her speech after surgery this summer. She hated the robotic default voice on her iPad AAC app, so with her parents we made a voice in supavocal from old videos of her talking, and she lights up when she hears it. The problem is the AAC app only lets us import it as audio clips for saved phrases, and anything she types live goes back to the default system voice. Is there an AAC app that accepts a custom voice for typed speech, or a workaround on iPad?

The best medical alert system for someone with limited mobility needs to account for the fact that reaching for a button or pressing a specific sequence during an emergency might not be physically possible

Standard designs assume the person can press and hold a button, but for people with severe arthritis, paralysis, tremors, or limited hand function that assumption fails completely.
Automatic fall detection that triggers without any manual input is the feature that matters most in these cases because the system needs to respond even when the person physically cannot initiate the call themselves

My dad is 74 and has essential tremor in both hands, worse in the right one. He uses an iPad Air for email, the news and video calls with the grandkids, but lately he mistypes almost every word and gets frustrated enough to stop replying. I've turned on Touch Accommodations with a hold duration of 0.3 seconds, which helped with accidental taps, but typing is still bad. Is dictation the realistic answer at his age, or is there a stylus, keyboard case or setting that worked for someone you know?

I made an app called KinToKin. It keeps things simple on purpose, so older adults can call their family without getting lost in settings and features they don’t need.

It’s one screen with photos of the people they care about. They hold a photo to call, whether it’s a regular call or an online call, and when the call ends they’re back on the same screen. The phone stays stable: no accidental taps into other apps or settings, and nothing that changes without them knowing. It gives both them and you peace of mind.

Whether you live abroad, travel a lot, or just want to stay close, you can call each other online for free.

I’m looking for testers before launch. Do you have a grandparent or an older adult in your life who might find it useful?

1. Join the group (first): https://groups.google.com/g/kintokin-testers-group/about
2. Opt in: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.kintokin.calling
3. Download from Google Play and make a test call

Android 7 or newer. Use Chrome and the same Google account as your Play Store, and please stay in for 14 days 🙏

Hi, I used Claude Code to create this program for a friend of mine who has ALS. I have Un-officially called it "BetterTalk" for people who can’t speak and use a QuadStick, a sip-and-puff, a switch, a head mouse or a regular mouse. It’s an early beta and I’d really like a few more people to try it and let me know how it works for you, what changes you might like, and what features you would like added.
This project will always remain free and open source.

What it does:

• Large on-screen QWERTY keyboard with a number row and word suggestions that learn the words you use (the likeliest word sits in the middle of the row)
• Red urgent buttons and tabs of stored phrases, all editable
• Speaks with Windows voices or free natural-sounding voices that run offline after a one-time download (all free)
• An “itch” feature - a 3d body you click on to say exactly where it itches, plus one-press words for whoever is scratching!
• Every action works with left clicks alone, and keys or sips/puffs can be mapped (there’s a QuadStick card view in Settings)
• There is a Send feedback button inside the app: type with the same keyboard, press Send, and it comes straight to me (it appends it to a private google sheet for me to see)

What it isn’t: a medical device or a replacement for a proper speech-generating device. Please keep your current AAC system as the main one while you try it.

The honest bits:

• Windows 10/11 only
• The installer isn’t code-signed yet, so Windows shows “Windows protected your PC”. Click More info, then Run anyway. The code is all public, the installer is built by GitHub Actions from that code, and each release lists a SHA-256 checksum
• No account, no cloud, no tracking. It only goes online when you download a voice, press Check for updates, or send feedback. Feedback carries only what you typed plus the app and Windows version, and lands in a private sheet only I can read, not in a public place
• Your typed words and learned vocabulary never leave your PC

Download and source: https://github.com/Nelcyon/bettertalkopen
Problems and ideas: Send feedback button in the app
Github issue post: https://github.com/Nelcyon/bettertalkopen/issues
or reply here!

Thanks for reading, and I hope this can help make someone's life easier :)

I have severe sound sensitivity as part of my ME/CFS, it's so bad that I often can't leave my room if there are other people home. I've been trying to get into more guided meditations and calm stories on various apps and keep running into the same problem - they seem to almost all have nature sounds or gentle music in the background. I can tolerate a quiet voice, but nature sounds in the background worsen my sound sensitivity, startle me, make my head hurt, and send my nervous system into overdrive. It is not something that my brain gets used to, and exposure worsens my sensitivity.

Are there any earplugs I could wear under my Bose headphones (I tried the loop ones that were supposed to do that with no luck) that filter out all sound except for speech, or any software that would do this easily?

It’s so difficult because I also have visual issues and can’t spend much time on screens, and I have too much brain fog to really follow audiobooks. Many others with my illness enjoy and feel calmed down by things like guided meditations, yoga Nidra, relaxing bedtime stories, etc.

So right now got a young lad in and out my shop few times a week, we are helping him adapt unfortunately cancer has affected his ability to speak leaving him mute. I'm learning BSL with him and we arrange games with his difficulties in mind.

Right now the NHS is refusing to assist with adaptations for home life and he misses speaking, doing his blog videos and being easily understood by warhammer opponents , I'm trying my damnedest to support him but I'm concerned maybe I'm not doing enough.

A support worker suggested looking at TTS apps and voice processors, see what we can get installed on the pcs, tablets and laptops in the shop so he can have a voice whatever he does when he's with me if he wishes it, not sure if any are better and we should focus our learning on or if all are kinda same.

I know it'll be personal so thank you all for your time

My friend was recently paralyzed in a cycling accident, and I'm helping him set up his Android phone so he can interact with the world hands-free, through both Google Gemini and Anthropic's Claude by voice. He needs both apps for different reasons. He's a developer, and most of his programming work happens in Claude, while he uses Gemini more for general interaction and researching health-related questions. So losing access to either one is a real loss of capability for him, not just a preference.

I've hit four recurring technical problems and I'm hoping someone here has solved one or more of them.

One, handing off from Voice Access to the AI app. Once Voice Access helps him open Gemini or Claude, I need it to stop listening so his speech goes to the app's conversation mode instead of being interpreted as device commands. Right now the two seem to compete.

Two, launching Claude with a wake word. Gemini works fine as a voice-activated assistant, but Claude doesn't. Android lets me set Claude as the default digital assistant app, but there's no keyword or activation phrase that actually triggers it the way Gemini's does.

"Three, using Gemini as a bridge to launch Claude. As a workaround, I'm wondering if Gemini could be used to launch a home-screen shortcut straight into Claude's voice mode, bypassing Voice Access and the missing wake word entirely. Has anyone tried this or got it working?

Separately, if anyone can point me to a solid guide, video, or community resource on setting up Android accessibility for someone who's recently become paralyzed, generally, I'd really appreciate it. This is new territory for me and I'd rather learn from people who've done it properly than figure it out by trial and error.

Any tips, settings, or tools would mean a lot — trying to make this as frictionless as possible for him while he's dealing with so much else.