Stories
Open Adaptive Stories is a free iPhone and iPad app for children with motor disabilities. Take a picture of a book page, a pet, or a day at the park; the app finds the people and things in it and makes each one a spot. In reading mode a highlight moves from spot to spot, and one press of an adaptive switch picks the highlighted one and speaks it: a word, a sentence, or a parent's recorded voice.
An App Store release is being prepared so families without a Mac can install it. Until then the app builds from source with Xcode.
Why another reading app
The commercial options are expensive and still work awkwardly with switches. Most need custom iOS Switch Control recipes, fullscreen tricks, or a helper to change pages. This app scans on its own, and the page turns and the exit button are part of the scan cycle, so a child can read a whole story and leave it without anyone touching the screen.
What it does
Stories from anywhere
Build a story from the camera, the photo library, or a PDF. A book scanner built into the app finds the page corners and crops each shot by itself. One photo per page, or up to four in a collage.
Spots four ways
Drag a box or circle, draw around something with a finger, or paint over it with the wand. The selection snaps to the person, animal, or thing under each stroke, and an automatic mode marks everything it finds with a suggested label.
Reads the printed page
The text on a photographed page can become spots that read it aloud, one spot per paragraph, so a favorite book works as a story too.
Scanning built in
Automatic scanning moves the highlight and one press picks. Step scanning uses one key to move and another to pick. Touch works too, and the highlight can follow the drawn outline in any color.
Any voice
Spots speak in a system voice, a higher quality voice downloaded in iOS Settings, a Personal Voice, or a recording of your own. Every spot can have its own.
Share and back up
A story exports as a .oastory file and travels like any file: AirDrop, Messages, Files. The format is an ordinary ZIP with a documented layout, and an export option leaves voice recordings out.
Using a switch
Pair the switch as an ordinary Bluetooth keyboard in Settings. No Switch Control setup is needed: the app listens for the key presses itself. The Open Adaptive Switch, a $15 DIY Bluetooth switch, lines up out of the box, and any switch that types a key works, including commercial Bluetooth switches and keyboards. iOS Switch Control still works if a family already uses it, and so does plain touch.
Build at a desk, read on the iPad
The web app makes and plays the same story files on any computer with a browser. It can also bring in books from Monarch Reader, a library of thousands of free picture books under Creative Commons licenses; each becomes a story with its caption read aloud on every page.
Everything in the iOS app runs on the device. Photos, voices, and stories never leave it unless you share them, and there are no accounts, ads, or purchases. The privacy policy is one page.
Try it now
The web app runs in any browser, no install and no account. The iOS app builds from source today, and the App Store release is on its way.