Why?

Existing expressive language assistive technologies are tied to custom hardware or proprietary operating systems and as a result are both extremely expensive and limited in versatility. School boards are reluctant to purchase either the stand alone devices or the software solutions and typically mandate that such purchases remain within school settings. This situation hinders the continuation of therapy and communication in the home and community. Additionally, currently there is no universal open library of visual language samples and todays systems require individuals to create their own vocabularies which are not easily shared or accessible across software and hardware platforms.