Grid Player 

The long-awaited Grid App is now available on the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone. The Grid 2 is one of my favourite assistive technology programs that enables you to communicate and to control your computer by touch or switches. The Grid Player brings the communication function to the iPad, where grids of cells can hold pictures and/or words that can be selected to be spoken and can also link to other grids for more words.

Out of the Box

After downloading the App to your Apple device, you are asked to either 'log in' or to create a new account. This is the only way you can update your communication grids and will be explained later on in this review.

After creating a new account you enter the Grid Explorer screen, where you can choose from 'information' that explains how to use the App, Symbol Talker A and Symbol Talker B which are 2 example layouts of communication grids using symbols and lastly, Text Talker that allows you to directly type and talk.

The Cost/The Catch

To have anything more than examples, you'll need to edit the grids and maybe add new grids linking from others, depending on your range of vocabulary. This is where we stop mentioning the word 'FREE'.

To edit any Grids on Grid Player, you need to have The Grid 2 software installed on your computer (PC). From your computer, you can create new grids and edit existing grids and this is where the account creation comes in.

The term 'cloud computing' is a term that is increasingly working its way into computer terminology. What cloud computing describes is a way of storing information on another computer so that you only need to access the information when you want it, the information won't clog up your own hard drive and hopefully is more secure than your own computer and is less likely to crash and burn.

Anyway, enough of the science lesson. In reality, what you are doing is using your PC to edit the grids, then upload (copy) them to Sensory Software's cloud (storage device) and then copying the grids over to your Apple device.

For 99.9% of people, this would be needed as the alternative would be to only communicate the words in the example grids, which makes the Grid Player App without buying The Grid 2 PC software just a demo.

In an environment where multiple people are using the Grid Player (such as in a school), then a single copy of The grid 2 can be used to update multiple iPads running Grid Player, negating the need to purchase 1 copy to support each iPad running Grid Player.

The Grid 2 software costs £360 + VAT (if you need to pay VAT), which now makes the Grid Player possibly the most expensive App on the market. As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, the Grid 2 is one of my favourite assistive technology programs and is a very versatile, powerful and attractive package that allows you to communicate and control a PC and all of its applications. So, if having the power of The Grid 2 PC application opens up your PC world (not the store) then it's £360 for accessing email, Internet, writing letters as well as the Grid Player editor. Of course, if you already own a copy of The Grid 2 then you're laughing and you've just wasted 5 minutes of your life reading the last section.

If you are happy and able to type and talk and don't really need short cuts to phrases, then the Text Talker will offer you a free option and no need to purchase Grid Player. Text Talker also has word prediction, though only displays 3 words at a time, but free is free!

The interface

To make sure you don't waste more of your time reading information that doesn't apply to you - SWITCH USERS TURN OFF NOW! Yes, many people who use The Grid 2 software are switch users, unable to use mouse or touchscreen. Unfortunately, switches are not supported in the Grid Player and Sensory Software haven't indicated their plans to rectify this (as of the date of writing this review). This means that it's touch or nothing.

I'm writing this point in a separate paragraph so I can easily delete it when the next release resolves this issue. To exit out of the user profile, Sensory have tried to mimic the Apple 'slide to unlock' bar (you know, the one you have to use to take the device out of sleep). They have hashed this up by having a tab to start the swipe located on the far right corner for you to swipe all the way across the screen. The size of the tab is minute and takes me about 20-30 attempts to start the swipe. We now understand that this is being addressed for the next update I believe - thank you Sensory!

Once you're in the user's grid set, you would navigate between grids from linking cells, so the sliding problem is more for the person setting it up.

Updating and Editing

First, make sure you have the latest version of The Grid 2 (you can use the Sensory Updater installed on your PC to do this). Then you will need to sign in from within The Grid 2 program on your PC, select the User and then click on 'Send to Grid Player'. This will then send the grid set to the 'Cloud' and then the next time you launch Grid Player, navigate to the Grid Explorer and press the reload button. Grid Player will now download the User grid set that you sent to the cloud and you will see it in the Grid Explorer screen on you Apple device.

This is a simple and straight forward way of updating Grid Player as editing on the PC (using mouse and keyboard) is much more comfortable than if you were to tackle the task with the iPad/iPhone keyboard and touch interface.

The down-side is that The Grid 2 is rather complicated to get to grips with as it is an in-depth program, though feel free to call our Helpline on 0808 800 0009 for free help and advice for this.

There is a collection of pre-designed grids that can be downloaded from Sensory Software's Online Grids site with many grids specifically designed for Grid Player. These grids will need to be downloaded to your PC, edited to taste and then uploaded (sent) to the cloud to then be downloaded to your iPad. Sounds complicated, though once you've done this a couple of times, it's straight forward.

Voice - our opinion

There seems to be only 2 voices available - Rachel and Graham. Although they are high quality, English sounding voices, there are only 2 of them and they are adult sounding, so not ideal for kids. The speech rate and pitch are also not customisable.

Pros

• If you already own a copy of The Grid 2 for the PC, then this is a very cheap (free) option to use the iPad as a communication device. It has the slick looks of The Grid 2.
• Editing many cells and grids on the PC can speed up the task as you aren't relying on the Apple device's touchscreen input method.
• For some, the TextTalker example grid can be used as it is, making Grid Player a free, usable App.

Cons

• If you don't already own The Grid 2 for the PC and you don't see the need to, then £360 is a huge cost for an App. For a cheaper alternative look at Proloquo2Go and Predictable for suitability.
• That slide bar really needs to either go or be modified. You can disable it in the Apple device's Settings panel, though when you need to use it, it makes for a frustrating game.
• No switch support! For an alternative App that does support switches, have a look at Predictable. This doesn't work the same as Grid Player, as it uses direct keyboard input and/or phrase selection (the latter is the closest to the Grid Player interface).
• Voices could be more varied and the speech rate adjustable. Proloquo2Go definitely has the pick of the voices on the Apple devices in my opinion.
• With no editing option available from within the App, you aren't able to utilise the iPad/iPhone's in-built camera to quickly insert photos into the communication cells as you are with some other communication Apps.