A tap-to-talk AAC communication board with graded vocabularies, plus ready-made and build-your-own social stories. Try both free before you unlock the full tools.
Speak Spark is a tap-to-talk AAC communication board with graded vocabularies, colour coding, AI topic boards and printable pages — a genuine everyday communication tool for non-verbal and emerging communicators. Have a play with it free before you unlock the full version.
Ready-made social stories for dentist visits, haircuts, a new baby and more — plus a fill-in-the-blanks builder to write your own personalised stories, read aloud and printable. Preview it free.
Social stories are powerful, highly structured visual guides that describe social situations, expectations, or routines to help neurodivergent children understand the world around them. Using social stories helps reduce anxiety, prepare for new experiences, and teach essential self-regulation strategies. A successful story is written from the learner's perspective, using clear, literal language and positive phrasing. While teachers and parents can draft these stories manually, our premium Social Story Studio app, available for nine pounds ninety-nine per year, provides customisable templates to streamline this process. Pairing physical stories with digital supports ensures that learners can access these vital guides whenever they experience sensory overload or emotional distress, fostering independence, confidence, and self-advocacy.
Managing transitions between activities is one of the most common challenges for pupils with special educational needs. A now and next board (also known as a first and then board) is a simple but highly effective visual support that breaks tasks down into manageable steps. By placing a visual symbol of the current task on the "now" side and a rewarding or motivating activity on the "next" side, educators provide immediate clarity and reassurance. Our free First-Then game provides a digital version of this tool, helping children build expectation and transition confidence. Using a now and next board consistently across home and school environments fosters independence and reduces task-avoidance behaviour, providing pupils with clear visual milestones throughout the school day.
For non-verbal learners or those with limited speech, a physical or digital communication board is an indispensable tool for daily interaction. A communication board displays high-frequency core vocabulary symbols, allowing the learner to point to pictures to express basic needs, feelings, choices, and ideas. This simple low-tech AAC intervention drastically reduces frustration and challenging behaviours associated with communication barriers. Educators and therapists across the UK can design custom boards using our free resources or integrate digital options. Providing consistent access to a clear communication board in every learning environment ensures that every child has a functional, reliable voice throughout their school day, enhancing classroom participation and peer interaction.
When choosing assistive communication systems, selecting the appropriate high-tech or low-tech aac board or aac communication board is critical to a learner's long-term independence. Our premium Speak Spark AAC app offers an accessible, cost-effective digital aac board for nine pounds ninety-nine per year, or as part of our twenty-pound annual bundle. To support implementation, Sensory Spark provides a forty-two activity Speech & Language library, free professional guides on questioning techniques, and our free CPD training programme, 'Behaviour is Communication'. These resources ensure that school staff and parents feel confident supporting AAC users. For questions about our communication tools, please contact our support team at support@sensoryspark.co.uk.
Social stories are gentle, personalised narratives designed to help individuals navigate new or challenging situations with greater confidence. By breaking down complex interactions into clear, manageable steps, these stories provide a helpful framework for understanding social cues and personal expectations. We encourage you to explore our dedicated resource library to find examples and templates that can support your specific needs. Whether you are at home or in the classroom, these tools offer a calm approach to developing essential communication skills.
Explore our full social stories library
Speak Spark is the AAC tool behind these communication boards, and it does not run on a monthly subscription. You can buy it outright for $79 once and keep using it, which suits families and schools that would rather not carry another recurring cost. Everything runs in a browser, so there is no dedicated device to buy and no app store approval to wait for. If you want to see the pricing and what is included before committing, the page below sets it out plainly.
Cost is one of the main reasons families delay trying AAC at all. Dedicated communication devices are expensive, and several well-known apps carry a price that puts them out of reach for a household deciding whether symbol-based communication will even suit their child. Speak Spark takes a different route: it runs on hardware you already own, in a browser, so the only cost is the software itself. The comparison page walks through the options.
Compare affordable AAC options
There is a practical difference between renting access to a communication system and owning it. If a subscription lapses during a school holiday or a change in circumstances, a child can lose the vocabulary they have learned to rely on. A one-time purchase removes that risk, because access does not depend on the next payment going through. If that matters to you, the page below explains how the one-time option works alongside the yearly plan.
Read about no-subscription AAC
Email: support@sensoryspark.co.uk
Address: United Kingdom
AAC gives a learner a way to say what they need, and a social story prepares them for a situation before it happens. Used together, they support both expressive communication and understanding of what comes next.
Speak Spark is Sensory Spark's browser-based AAC app. It is £9.99 a year in the UK, and it runs on tablets, phones and Chromebooks with no app store download.
Social Story Studio is Sensory Spark's paid tool for making social stories. It is £9.99 a year on its own, or part of the £20 a year bundle with Speak Spark AAC and All About Me.