Our original plan for this project was to utilize a commercially available (but open source) AAC app with a customized vocabulary. But in 2024, that app got bought out, and their prices went up substantially….and their willingness to work on tweaks that would help us decreased to zero. It is now clear that our best option is to run our own version of the software on our own server, which will save us money in the long run, allow us to easily (and inexpensively) make multiple accounts for building vocab, and allow us to help other Native folks who want to make their languages available on AAC.
In the short term, we can learn to make updates to include our language(s) and voices in the backend programming (or pay someone to do that in the near future). And we can issue licenses to users basically for the cost of running another account on the server. And we’ve met some folks who we can hire to help us with voice development (and a less ideal, but far easier option to fill in the gaps in the meanwhile).
Especially considering that we’ve now got corporate volunteers willing to help us do data entry on the verbs, we could be making quick progress on making this all function smoothly. But we need your help.
We’ve got a quote for $300 to set up the server and get the app running. It’ll take some amount monthly to keep it running (cost dependent on number of users), but we can manage a low cost server with just a few users pretty easily while we continue to make connections with schools, speech therapists, and families.
We know money is tight for many people. But $300 isn’t a lot. It only takes 30 people giving $10 each, to help us give Indigenous voices to people who otherwise wouldn’t have this opportunity.