About Wordbridge AAC

Wordbridge AAC is developed by Shey Al, a software engineer, and Haley Dalrymple, a paraprofessional working in special education. Frustrated with how unintuitive, expensive, and lacking in customizability flagship AAC apps are, we set out to build an intuitive, cheap, and flexible alternative.

This app was developed with the assistance of generative AI.

Wordbridge AAC is free and open source under the MIT license.

The board starts with Universal Core 36, developed by the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies at the University of North Carolina.

Additional vocabulary is based on published vocabulary research. Where we have made our own choices beyond that research, the derivation is documented in the repository.

The board's colors and left to right sentence order are based on the Modified Fitzgerald Key, developed from Edith Fitzgerald's work in deaf education in the 1920s. Variations of this system have been used in AAC for decades.

The symbols included with the app come from four symbol sets available through Global Symbols:

• Mulberry Symbols
• Stellar Symbols
• Tawasol
• OpenMoji

These sets are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The app can also use the emoji available on the device.

ARASAAC is supported as an optional symbol source rather than being bundled with the app. Its license does not permit commercial use, so it is left as an option for people who want to use it.

Full credits for each symbol set, including credits for individual symbols, are available in the app under Settings → About → Symbol credits.