Choice Boards is a simple but useful iPad app that facilitates making and communicating choices. It is designed for children and adults with autism (ASD) or other conditions that make communication difficult. Can be used as a form of Augmentative and Alternate Communication (AAC).
Choice Boards can be used for communication:
– About choices in daily life, such as “What would you like to eat for lunch?”, “Where would you like to go for a walk?”, “What do you want to watch on TV?”, etc.
– About rewards during an ABA or other learning session, replacing a velcro choice board
– As a general AAC communication help
Choice Boards allows a parent or teacher to create and manage multiple choice boards. Each choice board consists of up to six pictures selected from the iPad’s Photo Library.
Once a choice board is prepared, we can go out of editing mode and present it to the child for choosing one of the pictures. In this mode the choice board is shown without any distracting UI elements, showing just the pictures in full screen mode.
The choice can be made by tapping a picture. It gets enlarged to clearly indicate what was chosen.
The parent or teacher can toggle the editing mode anytime by double tapping anywhere on the choice board.
Please note that the app does not contain any ready to use picture library. You can do web search for pictures with Safari, save them to the Photo Library and later use in Choice Boards. Or you can use pictures taken with the iPad’s camera and saved in the Photo Library.
App Store link: Choice Boards
Comments, questions and ideas for enhancements are welcome and can be sent to choice.boards.app@gmail.com.
Future enhancements:
– an iPhone version
– support for all screen orientations
– possibility to get pictures directly from the camera (done!)
– built-in web photo search
– library of ready to use picture cards
– enhance pictures with text (done!)– enhance pictures with badges (done!)
– translation to other languages
Privacy Policy: The app does not collect or process any personal data.
Plans to make this app available for Android?
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I’m sorry but I do not plan an Android version. The technology is very different and I would have to rewrite the app from scratch.
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Thanks!
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How come some photo’s from my iPhone library won’t work but others do? I turned off the Live function but some of them still refuse to be moved in the board
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Hi Katinka, basically you should be able to use all photos from your Photo Library on the iPad, including Live Photos. However the ordering of photos when choosing them for a board might be different from that in the Photos app. Choice Boards orders them rather by the time they were originally taken and not the time they came into the iPad. So if you transfer an older photo from your iPhone to the iPad then it might be that it is not shown on the top of the list. Could you scroll more down and check you can find it there? The same might happen if you download a picture from the web. I know that it can be annoying and it is definitely something to be improved – I’m sorry for that. In the meantime can you try this workaround?
Please let me know if it worked for you.
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How do I make the pictures bigger?
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Currently there is no option to enlarge the pictures. Thanks for the suggestion!
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Hi, I am not sure what I’m doing wrong. one the first few boards I created I can see a preview of all the icons. on some other boards I can only see one icon or no icons without opening the board.
Thanks Sandra
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Hello Sandra, thanks for contacting me.
Could you send me iPad screenshots showing the problem? One with the board list and with the boards opened as well
Please sent them to choice.boards.app@gmail.com
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Love this app. But I can no longer add sentences to pics and previous boards don’t say the sentences any more. Can you help with that
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Hello Janis,
Sad to hear that. Sure, I will try to help. First of all can you check:
– The volume setting of the iPad – it should be set to high
– Whether the Silent Mode is off (Bell icon in Control Center)
If it does not help let me know and please send to choice.boards.app@gmail.com:
– the version number of the operating system (Settings -> General -> About -> Software Version)
Regarding the other issue, could you send me a screenshot showing the moment when you try to add a sentence to the pic but it does not work and describe your actions?
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