Sayella is here: an affordable, cross-platform AAC app, live today

I am writing this on launch day, and I still half expect to wake up and find it is not quite real. It is. Sayella is live, right now, free to download on the App Store and Google Play. If you have been waiting for an affordable, genuinely cross-platform way for someone you love to be heard, you do not have to wait any more. You can install it on the device in your hand today.

I want to use this post to tell you why Sayella exists, what it does, what it costs, and, because trust is the only thing that matters in this small community, exactly what is working today versus what is still rolling out. No spin. The straight version.

Why I built this

Sayella started with a wall. Like a lot of families, the moment AAC came into our world, the advice was to buy one of the well-known apps. Then came the price tags, often hundreds of pounds, and the small print. Most of the recommended apps only run on one kind of device, so the tablet you already own may be the wrong one. And more and more of them now sit behind subscriptions, which means that if money gets tight and a payment lapses, a person can lose the words they rely on to be understood.

That last part is the one I could not get past. The idea that someone's voice could be switched off because a card expired felt wrong in a way I could not let go of. So I set out to build the thing I wished had existed when we started: affordable, working across the devices a family already owns, and impossible for anyone to switch off.

That is Sayella. It is a communication and education tool, not a medical device, and I make no diagnostic or treatment claims. But it is built with care, with British speech and language therapists, in UK English, for nonverbal and minimally-verbal people across the whole journey, from a child's very first symbol through to literate teens and adults.

What Sayella does

At its heart, Sayella is a board of words and symbols that speaks aloud when a person taps, scans or looks at them. What makes it different is how it is built to grow with the person using it.

New words appear inside a fixed grid, so learned buttons never move and the grid never reflows. That visual integrity matters more than it might sound. When a button stays exactly where it has always been, a person can find their words by muscle memory, and the app can grow with them without pulling the rug out from under what they already know. The same app, the same account and the same muscle memory carry someone from their first handful of words all the way to robust core vocabulary and on to literate, text-based communication. It is never babyish for a teenager or an adult.

Words are colour-coded by their part of speech using a modified Fitzgerald key, with red reserved for stop, no and help. Colour is never the only signal, every button pairs a symbol with text, so it works for readers and pre-readers alike. Switch access, scanning and auditory scanning are first-class and built in from the start, not bolted on. And there is a published WCAG accessibility statement, because accessibility should be documented, not just assumed.

The three promises

Everything about Sayella comes back to three promises I am not willing to break.

• Cross-platform. One account works on iPhone, iPad, Android and the web. The same board follows the person between home, school and everywhere in between, on the devices a family already has. Most of the premium apps families are told to buy run on only one kind of device. Sayella does not make you buy the right brand of tablet to be heard.
• No forced subscription. There is always a one-off, lifetime way to own Sayella. If you choose an optional subscription and it ever lapses, the app simply degrades to local-only. It never switches off a voice the user already had. That is a hard line, not a marketing line.
• Your data is portable. You can import and export in Open Board Format any time. Coming from Proloquo or TD Snap? You can bring your boards with you. There is no lock-in, ever, and if Sayella is ever not right for you, your words leave with you.

What it costs

Plain numbers, no buried add-ons:

• Free, forever: the full fixed-position core engine and modelling tools, one device, a limited vocabulary, offline speech, and no card required. This is a real, usable app, not a locked demo.
• Monthly £7.99 or Yearly £59 (about £4.92 a month): cloud sync, multi-device, team and therapist accounts, premium UK voices, AI symbol generation and analytics.
• Lifetime £189, one-off: all features, no recurring fee, and grant and charity eligible.

VAT relief is available at checkout for eligible UK disabled individuals and charities. For context, the apps families are usually pointed toward tend to land somewhere between roughly £240 and £550, often on one device only. Sayella starts free and tops out at a one-off £189 that you own for good.

What is live today, and what is rolling out

I promised the straight version, so here it is.

Live today: the free app, the fixed-grid core engine and modelling tools, offline speech, Open Board Format import and export, switch access and scanning, and the published accessibility statement. You can download Sayella right now, build a board and start communicating, without paying anything.

Rolling out this week: cloud sync across devices, premium UK voices, and AI symbol generation are part of the paid tier and are coming online now, in the days around launch. If you open the app today and a paid feature is still being switched on in your region, you will see it labelled clearly, and it is arriving imminently rather than someday. I would rather tell you a feature is rolling out than pretend it is finished. When something a person relies on holds their voice, "nearly working" is not good enough, and I would rather show you the seams while I am closing them.

I am also forming a clinical advisory group of UK speech and language therapists. When members are confirmed and have consented, I will name them. I will not invent endorsements to fill the gap in the meantime. School and multi-user licensing is coming too, and I will publish real numbers when they are real, not before.

Be part of day one

If affordable, cross-platform communication that nobody can switch off is what your family or your caseload has been waiting for, you can have it today. Download Sayella free, build a board at the kitchen table, and hear a voice that grows with the person using it.

This is also a conversation, not a broadcast. I am reading every comment, every review and every message today and in the days ahead. Tell me what works, tell me what does not, and help shape where Sayella goes next. The whole point of building this in the open is that you can see it improve, week by week, with you in the room.

Download free on the App Store and Google Play. Start free on any device, no card needed.

Sayella. Every voice deserves to be heard.