TNP and Tippy Talk
This spring, The Nora Project had the good fortune to receive a generous grant from the Council for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities and the Arc of Illinois, funding its first-ever virtual inclusion initiative. In collaboration with TippyTalk, a company founded by a father who desired to communicate via text-message with his non-verbal daughter, The Nora Project team, led by our Inclusion Specialist, Dr. Janie Avant, crafted a six-week program to provide TippyTalk licenses and guided instruction to a group of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.
Tippy Talk is an innovative picture-based application that allows children with communication differences to send and receive text, picture, and audio messages. Janie created a six-week experience for participants and their families, walking them step by step through how to use the app, providing instruction on basic communication skills, and offering ideas for how to engage in two-way communication. Each week, families were sent a lesson plan with video tutorials like the one below to guide their use of the app. But the experience didn’t stop after six weeks. Participants in the pilot program will have lifetime access to the TippyTalk application so that they can keep the conversations going!
The program was an overwhelming success. Over the six-week pilot period, 155 text messages were sent to 44 different communicators. We surveyed participating families to learn more about their experience, and the feedback was incredibly positive. 75% of those surveyed indicated that the TippyTalk app pilot helped them to speak up and tell people what is important to them. Through the use of the TippyTalk app, kids with communication differences were given the chance to use a tool so common to us all in a truly accessible and authentic way. One parent shared, “It allowed him to communicate with people outside of our household at any time. It was fun for him to make choices about what to send and hear from his friends. Although we had to help him to make sure he understood what he was doing, I expect he will become more independent with it over time. Since texting is so predominant in our society, it is nice he can now be included in that as well.”
The Nora Project team was so thrilled to provide this service to our community. Because of the success of the pilot, TNP will continue to partner with TippyTalk to provide licenses to individuals in our participating schools with licenses with a goal of encouraging more inclusive communication opportunities between peers and teachers. You can learn more about the success of this pilot by downloading the report below.