SpeakAnyWay AAC

Every cell on every board speaks when tapped. The voice it uses is your choice — and you can change it any time.

What you'll need

A SpeakAnyWay account
A communicator set up (or your own account works for trying voices out)
Volume turned up

Pick your account voice (the starting point)

Sign into app.speakanyway.com.
Open the menu (top-left) and choose Settings — or tap Settings in the bottom bar.
Find the Voice & speech card.
Open the Voice list. You'll see adult, child, and accented options.
Tap the play button next to a voice — it reads Play "Kevin" at default speed — to hear it.
Pick the one that fits: a higher voice, a lower voice, a calmer cadence, something that feels right for the person who'll be using it.
Tap Save.

Your account voice is the default for new boards. It doesn't reach back and change boards you've already made — those keep the voice they were built with. To change an existing board, set the board's own voice (below).

Set a voice for one communicator

If different people use different voices, set one per communicator:

Open the communicator and go to their Edit tab.
Open Advanced settings (it's collapsed by default).
Under Speaking voice, pick a Voice.
Save.

This section doesn't appear for sandbox or MySpeak-only communicators.

Set a voice for one board

For boards where a different voice makes sense — a calmer voice for a bedtime routine, a louder one for emergencies:

Open the board and tap Edit.
In the editor header, tap the Settings pill.
On the Board Settings page, find the Voice & Language card — "How this board sounds when tiles are tapped."
Pick a Voice (there's a play button to preview it), then save.

Changing a board's voice re-records every tile on that board, so give it a moment before the new voice shows up.

How the voices fit together

It helps to know that tiles don't pick a voice at the moment you tap them — each tile has its audio already recorded and stored. So the voice settings decide what gets recorded, and when:

Your account voice is used when a new board is created.
A board's voice is applied to every tile on that board when you save it — this is the setting that changes a board you already have.
A communicator's voice sets the default for what you build for that person.

Practical version: to change how one board sounds, change the board's voice. To change what gets built next, change the account or communicator voice.

Make one tile sound different

There's no per-tile voice picker. If a single cell needs to sound different — a recorded "help," Grandma saying a name, a real laugh — record it instead:

Open the board and tap the tile you want to change.
Go to the Audio tab.
Under Record your voice, tap Record and say it (up to a minute). Tap Listen back to hear it, then Save recording — nothing is saved until you do.

The top of the tab always shows what the tile plays now. While it's playing your recording, Use the board's voice puts it back on the generated voice; your recording is kept, and Choose a voice below lists every clip the tile has — including your recordings — so you can switch between them. More options holds uploading an audio file and downloading the current clip.

What to expect

You can change the voice as often as you want. It's not a one-time decision. If the voice you picked doesn't fit after a week, switch it.
Voices play out of whichever device's speaker is being used. Headphones, external speakers, AirPods — whatever is connected works.
Volume matters more than you'd think. Most "the voice isn't working" reports turn out to be a muted device. Crank it up.
Premium voices come with Basic and Pro. Free accounts use the system voices. See Plans and slot limits.

Picking a voice that fits

A few things that help:

Try a couple before committing. Play three or four samples — the one that sounds right will usually become obvious.
Match the age, not the exact match. A 7-year-old who's nonspeaking doesn't need a 7-year-old voice. Pick what feels appropriate to them, even if that's an older voice that sounds more like a peer or a parent.
Test it on a real board. Samples are short. Open one of their boards and tap a few cells with the new voice before you commit.
Ask them. If your communicator can react to options ("which one sounds best?"), let them pick. It's their voice.

Common questions

Can I record my own voice? For individual tiles, yes — open the tile, go to the Audio tab, and record. A custom voice that reads everything isn't available yet.
Why does the voice sound different on a different device? SpeakAnyWay falls back to the device's own built-in voice if it can't load the recorded one — usually an offline browser or a network blocking us. If one tile went quiet on a device, that's often a bad cached clip; the app now repairs it and retries on the next tap.
Are there voices in other languages? Yes — four Spanish voices are available now (Lupe, Pedro, Lucia, Sergio). The Spanish interface is partly translated; roughly a third of screens still show English while translation continues. The language list offers more than English and Spanish, but those extra languages change the spoken output only — the interface stays in English.
The voice plays the wrong word. That's a board issue, not a voice issue. A tile's Spoken word is fixed once the tile is made — to change what it says, add a new image with the word you want. The Display label (the text under the picture) is separately editable. See Edit a board.
The voice sounds robotic. That's usually the device's built-in voice taking over because the recorded clip couldn't load. Check the connection and try again — SpeakAnyWay's own voices are the natural-sounding ones.

Pick a voice that fits