In our pursuit towards making every voice heard, 2018, we believe has been a milestone year. We made some big updates to existing versions of Avaz for Communication to give you a product that learns, gets better and grows, just as each of our users do. We have released some new languages in Avaz for Communication and have many more in the pipeline. We are excited about this as we believe that language should never be a barrier in communication. With every new language, we get one step closer to creating barrier-free communication for all. We love interacting with our users to understand how we can make Avaz work better for them. In this regard 2018 saw us reaching out to more parents and users through our workshops and showcases. This, especially, meant a lot to us.
So here’s a quick round-up of 2018 – the year that was!
Collaborations and New Products
Team Avaz has always believed in bringing together great ideas to create products that enable and empower. 2018 was deeply significant in this regard. This year saw some incredibly powerful collaborations with multiple domain experts that led to the creation and release of two amazing new products.
- MDA Avaz Reader – The Madras Dyslexia Association is among India’s most respected and experienced organizations working with children with Dyslexia. With over 20 years of expertise in dyslexia education and support, they have created a variety of tried and tested modules to enable struggling readers to read better. To make this expertise available to more children via easily accessible technology around the world, Avaz has collaborated with MDA to create the MDA Avaz Reader app. The Reader app enables dyslexic children to read independently through methods and features that have proven to be powerful and hugely effective over the years. You can download the app here – Apple App Store & Google Play Store
- Avaz Vietnamese – We partnered with Viet Dynamic Connections to release an AAC app that is customized and localized for the users of Vietnam. The app was released in less than a year of collaboration. We are very excited to have been able to expand the repertoire of languages on Avaz. You can download the app here.
Avaz Community
2018 saw a rise in the number of support groups being formed by parents of Avaz users. These online and offline groups are completely driven by parents who have come together to support each other and share insights, tips, and resources related to Avaz and communication. We are grateful for these communities. They help us stay grounded and inspire us to keep improving Avaz.
Workshops & Events
2018 was a year in which we conducted multiple workshops for parents, caregivers and therapists around the world. These workshops were held both in person as well as remotely in the form of webinars.
The aim of the Avaz Workshops are two-fold –
- To introduce the concept of AAC and how it is beneficial for children as well as complementary to work done by caregivers and therapists.
- To run through the various features of Avaz.
The workshops cover all aspects of AAC and Avaz. Right from setting up and customizing the Avaz app for each user to giving ideas on how AAC like Avaz can be integrated into daily life, the workshops give training and information that is informed by years of user inputs. We have been receiving feedback that these workshops have been immensely useful for the attending parents, special educators and speech therapists. They have also been very effective in addressing doubts related to various aspects of the app and its use.
If you would like to have our team conduct a workshop or webinar for your school, team or for a group of parents, do drop us a mail on [email protected] 🙂
The year also saw Avaz participate in a number of events & showcases, some of which you can read about here and here. We were also present at the Global Autism Convention in Bangalore, India among other really interesting events through the year.
App Updates
The first quarter saw us overhauling in-app support on Avaz. You can now reach out to us easily via chat while using the app itself. The Avaz Live function was made completely functional and easily accessible. Avaz Live can be used for remote therapy sessions with speech therapists. The therapist, in turn, can also use Live to operate Avaz at the user’s end to take them through use and learning activities. These two features were rolled out for Sri Lanka, Denmark, Australia, France, India & US over the year.
The Avaz App was made fully compatible with Android devices. What’s more, the App is optimized to be used on Android devices of ANY screen size. Some Android only new features are the option of sharing messages created on App with contacts on WhatsApp and the Bubble feature, with which a user can always quickly access Avaz, without having to close the app they are using.
Coming to version specific updates, Avaz Sri Lanka had a comprehensive Sri Lankan Tamil Vocabulary added to it.
As we look back on the year gone by, we cannot wait to do much more in the coming year. Thank you for supporting us and continually pushing us to bring you only the best! We look forward to having you join us as we move ever onward towards Making Every Voice Heard in 2019 and beyond!
