A voice that learns your child.
Amir's bridge. Open to every friend, everywhere, for free.
EchoBridge is a communication app for children who are non-verbal or minimally verbal. Tap a picture and it speaks. Build a sentence and it says the whole thing out loud, in a clear gentle voice, in fifteen languages — all of them built in, with nothing to download.
And it can learn your child's own movements — a hand raise, a lean, a head turn — and turn them into words. It teaches itself from your child in about two minutes, on your own device, with nothing ever uploaded anywhere.
Works on any phone, tablet, laptop or Chromebook. Add it to a home screen and it runs like a normal app, fully offline.
The idea behind it
Almost every communication device waits for a child to press something. EchoBridge does that too — but it also does something no other communication app does.
📷 It learns what this child already does
Turn on the camera and teach it a movement your child already makes — a particular hand raise, a lean, a head turn — and give that movement a meaning. It learns from scratch, from your child, in about two minutes.
🧠 Because generic models do not fit
Off-the-shelf gesture recognition is trained on adults performing conventional gestures. The movements that actually carry meaning for a non-speaking autistic child look nothing like that. So this learns one child rather than recognizing everybody badly.
🔘 And it becomes a switch
A learned movement can drive the entire board through scanning. A child who can move their head but cannot reliably touch a screen gets full access — with no hardware to buy, which for most families in the world is the whole difference.
No image is ever saved or sent. Each camera frame becomes about a hundred numbers describing how movement flowed across the picture, and those numbers never leave the device. EchoBridge is a communication aid, not a medical device, and it does not replace a speech and language professional.
How it works
Three steps, about two minutes. There is nothing to install and no payment details are ever requested.
Create a free account
An email and a password, chosen by the adult. It is stored only on this device — there is no server to send it to. It protects the caregiver settings; the child's board never needs a password.
Set up the child
A short, calm wizard: their name, what they love, how big the buttons should be, which language. Two minutes, and every answer is optional.
Hand over the tablet
That is it. The board is ready. Add it to the home screen and it opens like any other app — with or without internet, forever.
What is inside
Built with augmentative and alternative communication practice in mind, not as a toy. Every feature below is in the free version, because there is no other version.
Movement Coach
Teach the app a movement your child already makes and give it a meaning. It learns from your child rather than from a generic model, tells you honestly how accurate it is, and offers what it sees as a suggestion rather than speaking for them.
A real voice
Clear, slow, natural speech in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and Chinese. The voice is chosen automatically for the language, and every part of it is adjustable.
Core words first
107 high-frequency words stay in fixed positions, always visible. A small core covers most of everyday communication, and buttons that never move let a child get genuinely fast.
Learns this child
A prediction engine notices what this child says, when they say it, and what usually follows what — then offers likely next words in a separate Smart Row. The main board never rearranges itself.
Turns taps into sentences
Tap "want", "go", "park" and it speaks "I want to go to the park." The strip always shows the child's actual choices; only the voice is tidied, and that can be switched off.
Buddy talks back
A gentle companion that responds to what the child says — because children build language when their communication gets a real reply. Buddy reflects and offers, and never speaks for the child.
Insights for grown-ups
Sentence length over time, which communication functions are growing, emerging words, and how much you are modeling. Written as observations with a next step — never a score, never a diagnosis.
Calm space
A breathing visual and a quiet cause-and-effect game the child can reach at any moment, in one tap, without asking permission.
A real HELP button
Always on screen, needs a deliberate hold so it is never hit by accident, and sounds a warm alert plus a full-screen message a nearby adult can read from across a room.
Your own photos
A photo of this child's own cup often means far more than an abstract symbol. Add photos to any word, rename anything, hide what is not needed, and add words that only your family uses.
Visual schedules
First-then and full picture schedules, so what comes next is never a surprise. Predictability is regulation.
Printable cards
Print any category as symbol cards to laminate and cut. Paper never runs out of battery, and low-tech backup is not optional.
Switch scanning
For children who cannot reliably touch a screen. The board highlights items in turn and one or two switches choose. One-switch and two-switch, group scanning, adjustable timing, tremor filtering, and spoken previews for children with a visual impairment. HELP is always offered first.
Word forms
Tap the ✎ on any word for "wanted", "wanting", "will want", "more than one", "bigger". Without this a child can only ever speak in the present tense — they could never tell you what happened at school.
Spelling keyboard
A picture board has a ceiling; a keyboard has none. Three layouts, word prediction that learns this child's own words, and a genuine route into literacy rather than away from it.
Your own voice
Record any word in your own voice. Many children attend far better to someone familiar than to any synthetic voice — and for languages with no built-in voice, it is the only way the board can speak at all.
Grows with the child
Start at 24 powerful words on one calm screen, grow to 575 across 19 categories. Four levels, strictly nested, so nothing a child has learned ever disappears.
Quick phrases
Whole sentences in one tap, because conversation moves faster than a sentence can be assembled word by word.
Fitzgerald Key colors
The color standard used across the AAC field — orange things, green actions, blue describing words, red for anything urgent. It transfers to the paper board at school and to every other device your child will ever use.
Guided access
Lock the board so a child cannot wander into settings mid-conversation. They keep every word, every phrase and the HELP button; only the grown-up controls go away.
Built for access
Four themes including true high contrast, four button sizes, dwell selection for head pointing and eye gaze, hold-to-select to prevent accidental taps, and full keyboard and screen-reader support.
Your child's words stay on your device
This is the part we care most about, so here it is in plain language.
Nothing is uploaded. Ever.
There is no server. Every word, every setting, every photo and the whole history live in your browser's own storage on your own device. We could not read them if we wanted to, because they never travel anywhere.
No ads, no tracking, no profiles
No advertising network, no tracking pixel, no third-party analytics company, no cookie banner — because there are no cookies to warn you about. We count two plain numbers, so we know whether this is reaching anyone: how many times each page was opened, and how many accounts were created. No IP address, no device details, nothing that could be traced to you, and nothing at all from the child's board.
You are in control
Export the whole profile to a single file whenever you like — to back it up, move to a new tablet, or hand to a speech therapist. That file is the only way data ever leaves, and only you can create it.
⚠️ Please read this part
EchoBridge is a communication aid. It is not a medical device, it does not diagnose anything, it is not therapy, and it is not a replacement for a speech-language pathologist. It works best alongside professionals who know your child. It never speaks for a child, and it never overrides the adults who care for them.
Supporting the foundation
Optional, always. The app is free and there is nothing behind a paywall — this is here because people ask, not because anything depends on it.
💛 Not required — but it helps
EchoBridge costs you nothing and always will. There is no paid tier, nothing locked, and no feature you are missing by not giving. If money is tight — and for a lot of families with a disabled child it is — please just use the app. That is what it is for.
If you are able to give, the Amir Dean Foundation accepts donations, and they go toward reaching children who have no way to be understood yet.
💛 Ask how to donate 💬 Questions first
Giving changes nothing about your account, unlocks nothing, and is never asked for again inside the app. Please check the foundation's own page for its charitable status and whether a gift is tax-deductible where you live.
Questions families ask
Is it really free?
Yes, permanently, with no paid tier and no upsell. Because everything runs on your device, there are no servers to pay for — so there is never a reason to start charging you.
Why do I need an account then?
Only to protect the caregiver settings and keep several children's boards separate on one tablet. The account lives on this device alone. You can also skip it entirely.
What if I forget my password?
There is no server, so we cannot email you a reset. Instead you can clear the account from the sign-in screen and make a new one — your children's boards and history are kept.
Does it work without internet?
Completely. Load it once, then add it to your home screen. After that it never needs a connection again.
Will it replace speech?
No — and the research is reassuring here. Giving a child a reliable way to communicate does not hold back speech development. It is far more often the thing that unlocks it.
My child is not autistic. Can they use it?
Yes. It is designed for autistic children but it is used the same way by anyone who needs a picture-based voice — after a stroke, with cerebral palsy, apraxia, Down syndrome, or during recovery.
Can I add our own words?
Yes. Add words, rename any word, attach your own photos, hide anything that gets in the way, and reorder whole categories.
Several children on one tablet?
Yes. Each child gets their own board, settings, photos, history and their own prediction model. Switching takes one tap.
Can I share it with other families?
Please do. That is the entire point. Send them the link — echobridge.org — there is nothing to buy and no limit on how many people use it. The one thing to avoid is passing on a copy: a copy can be out of date or altered, and the link always gives them the real thing.
Ready when you are
Two minutes to set up. Nothing to pay, nothing to install, nothing to cancel.