SoundingBoard

SoundingBoard (SB) is a communication app designed to work on the iPhone and iPod Touch, though as with most apps, it will also work on the iPad. With its £29.99 price tag, SB is almost a quarter of the price of Proloquo2Go (P2G) which will set you back £109.

One main point to bear in mind is that SB was designed to work on the iPhone and iPod Touch and not the iPad. It will work fine on the iPad, however, the native resolution is set for the iPad/iPod Touch screen, the iPad allows you to enlarge the display, though the image quality does degrade slightly. Also, SB only runs in portrait mode and not landscape.

SB works along a similar vein to P2G and other touchscreen communication devices, though it has its’ upsides and its downfalls as well.

SB allows you to set up grids with 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 or 9 cells. Each cell can contain a picture, a message to display in the cell, a recorded message to play on activation and can also link to another grid of cells.

A major selling point of SB is that it is switch compatible, allowing users to use a Bluetooth switch interface ($159) with your favourite switch or switches to scan through the cells.

How to create grids and cells

From the starting screen you are asked if you would like to ‘Select an existing board’, ‘Create a new board’ or select the ‘Settings’. Selecting an existing board is pretty self explanatory, it allows you to select either one of the 14 pre-designed grids or any of the boards that you have already created.

Let’s go into more detail when creating a new board:

To create a new board, you are asked to give it a name, choose the layout (how many cells it will display) and then you can go into its edit mode to add the cells needed. NOTE – this is the only time you can edit the board, this is a major issue that I will explain in more detail later! Once you have selected the Messages link, you will be shown an editable screen of cells. By selecting a cell, you will link to another screen where you can create its contents.

What a picture?

With each cell, you need to provide a picture, in fact this is another issue I have with this app, you have to build the cell in a particular order (picture, message, recorded message, optional linking board) otherwise the cell won’t link to another board!

Anyway, you can pick from one of the few hundred coloured symbols (I don’t recognise the symbol set so it is probably their own). There are nowhere near the huge amount of symbols provided with P2G, though there are a few. Alternatively, you can pick from the photos stored on your iPhone/iPad or you can take a new photo using your iPhone/iPad’s camera.

Messages

After you have typed in a message to be displayed under the picture in the cell, you then have to record a message. This is an advantage over P2G as you use the internal microphone to sample your voice or other sound effect. The downside is that the person using SB to communicate has to use the voice of the person who has set it up. Very cool, if you can get Patrick Stewart to lend a hand for the voice over, maybe not so cool if you have to use a family member’s voice as the individuality of the user is somewhat lost.

Linking to other boards

OK, if you’ve performed the above tasks in the order mentioned, you will be able to link to another pre-designed board, either one of the 14 boards supplied or one you made earlier. This is where the lack of editing really slaps this app in the face!

Let’s take an example:

I would like to set up a Home board with 3 cells – ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I’m thirsty’ and ‘I’m tired’. I would like the first 2 cells to each link to a related board, food and drink. Now remember, I can’t go back and edit a board once it’s been created, so I have to create the Food and Drink pages first so that I can then create the Home board and link the ‘I’m hungry’ and ‘I’m thirsty’ cells to them.

This fine so far, I’ve chosen sandwiches and apples, pizza for my Food board and water, orange, coke and coffee for my Drinks board. Both boards have been created and saved. Now I create my Home board and link ‘I’m thirsty’ and ‘I’m hungry’ to their respective boards and ‘I’m tired’ just speaks the cell and goes nowhere.

I now press ‘I’m thirsty’ and the board changes to my Drinks board and I then press ‘Coffee’ and it plays the recording, say, ‘I want coffee please’. That’s great, I get my coffee, however, how do I get back to my home page/board. I may be hungry too?

The answer is press the small ’Tap For Menu’ message in the top left, which in turn gives you the option to press ‘Back’. These are fiddly little areas of the screen and only good for people with fine targeting skills and the cognitive ability to understand what’s going on. The solution would be to link the ‘Coffee’ cell to the Home page, but hold on, you can’t because you can’t edit any of the boards after they’ve been created.

Another issue is, what if I don’t like coffee anymore and become a tea drinker. You can’t just add Tea to the Drinks board because that would involve editing. You would have to create a new Drinks board from scratch, adding Tea to the menu and then edit the home page to link to the new Drinks page, but oh! I can’t edit the home page because that’s editing and you can’t edit!

This is a major flaw in my humble opinion and as they say in business ‘a deal breaker’ when if comes to choosing between SB and P2G. This isn’t even taking into account the non-native iPad support for the display and the orientation restriction. The only strength that puts the deal back on the table is the fact that SB supports switches, which is a big selling point, though P2G have been promising switch support for some time and when this happens, well, why bother with SB?

Pros

• Allows switch users to access communication on the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch platforms
• Supports recorded sound to activate when cell is selected

Cons:

• Lack of editing cells after creating makes this App a one screen wonder as the ability to link back and forth is made impossible 
• No synthesised voice available, so all sound has to be recorded