How to use Asher's Talk Board

For Grandma, Auntie, Mom, Dad, and anyone watching Asher. Read once. Takes 5 minutes.

Getting there

1. Open the link Syd sent you. Save it: on iPhone tap Share ➜ Add to Home Screen. On Android tap ⋮ ➜ Add to Home screen. Now it opens like an app.
2. Turn the phone volume up. The board talks out loud.
3. If it doesn't talk, flip the iPhone's side switch off silent.

The screen, top to bottom

• Talk / Numbers (top buttons): the two areas Asher can use.
• 🔒 Grown-ups (hold): press and hold 2 seconds. Asher can't open it by tapping. Word Bank, this guide, and settings live here.
• Sentence strip (white bar): pictures he taps line up here. Say reads the whole thing. ⌫ removes the last one. ✖ clears it.
• Groups (row of buttons): Talk, Needs, Feelings, Food, Dinos, Animals, Play, People, Places, My Words. Swipe the row sideways to see them all.
• Tiles: tap one and it pops up big and says the word.

The colors mean something

This is the Fitzgerald Key, the color system speech therapists use. Keeping it the same everywhere helps him learn sentence order.

The 6 rules (from his RBT training)

1. Model, don't demand. Tap the tiles yourself while you talk: tap “I” “want” “juice” and say it. He learns by watching you use it. Don't ask him to “say it” over and over.
2. Honor every tap. If he taps “ball”, give the ball, even if you think he meant something else. That's how he learns the board works. If it was a mis-tap, he'll show you.
3. Wait 5 seconds. After you ask “What do you want?”, count to 5 in your head before helping. Give him time to find it.
4. Offer two choices. Hold up juice and water, point to both tiles. Choice is easier than open questions.
5. Praise the attempt, fast. Any sound, sign, or tap toward a word gets an immediate “Yes! Juice!” and the item.
6. Never take the board away as punishment. It is his voice. A screen-time limit applies to games, not to talking.

Numbers area

• Count with dinos: tap a number, he sees that many dinos and hears the number.
• Quick math: pictures show the problem. He taps an answer. A wrong answer gets a gentle “try again”. After two misses the right one glows orange so he always finishes with a win. Switch to “Up to 10” once “Up to 5” is easy.

Logging words (most important job)

1. Hold 🔒 Grown-ups for 2 seconds. Word Bank opens.
2. Type exactly what he said, even if it's not a full word (“bah” for ball counts).
3. Pick the type, how it happened, and your name. Tap Save.
4. Check “Add as a tile” for new words so he can find them in My Words.
5. Tap Back to Asher.

The grey box at the top of Word Bank tells you where your entries save. If it says this phone only, tap Copy log to text Syd and paste it into a text to Syd at the end of the day so she can add it to his main record.

Screen-time tips

• Keep the board on Talk most of the time. Numbers is a short activity, 5 minutes is plenty.
• Put the phone away when he's done talking. Bring it back the moment he reaches for it or gets frustrated.

If something goes wrong

• No sound: volume up, silent switch off, close and reopen the link.
• Stuck in Grown-ups: tap “Back to Asher”.
• Page looks frozen: close the browser tab and open the link again. Nothing he built is lost except the sentence strip.