A short, plain-English summary of what AAC Communicator does, what we store, and what we don't do. This is a small beta service — we treat your data carefully.
📌 The short version
- The app is in beta. Things may break or change. Please report issues via the in-app 💬 Feedback button.
- We store the minimum needed to make the app work: your name, email, login codes, and the words / settings you save.
- We don't sell, share, or rent your data to advertisers, analytics companies, or anyone else.
- We do send the text you ask the app to speak to a third-party speech model (Hugging Face) to generate the audio. Once generated, the audio is cached on our own server. Details below.
- You can ask us to delete your account at any time (see Deletion).
📜 Terms of Service
1. What this app is
AAC Communicator is an Augmentative and Alternative Communication tool. It lets people who can't easily speak (children, adults with speech difficulties, people learning a new language) tap pictures and words to build sentences, which the app then speaks out loud.
2. Beta status
The app is in active beta. It is provided as-is, without warranty. It is not a medical device, not a replacement for professional speech therapy, and should not be used in safety-critical contexts. Use at your own risk.
3. Acceptable use
- Don't try to break the service, brute-force codes, or scrape other users' data.
- Don't upload illegal content (custom photos must be ones you have permission to use).
- Don't use the synthesised audio to impersonate real people for fraud or harassment.
- One signup per real person — automated mass signups will be removed.
4. Account & codes
Each account has a User ID and a 4–6 digit access code. The code is the only authentication. Keep it private. We can't recover a forgotten code, but an admin can reset it on request.
5. Termination
We may suspend or remove accounts that violate these terms or that show signs of abuse (spam, brute force, etc.). You can delete your account any time.
6. Changes
We may update these terms while the app is in beta. Substantial changes will be announced via the app or to your registered email.
🔒 Privacy & data
What we store on our server
| Data | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Name & email | So we can contact you about your account, and so admins can find you. | Until you delete your account. |
| User ID & access code (PIN) | To let you sign in. | Until you delete your account. |
| App settings (theme, kid/adult mode, voice choice, etc.) | So your preferences persist between visits. | Until you delete your account. |
| Custom words & uploaded photos | So your custom buttons appear in the app. | Until you delete the word, or your account. |
| Sentence history & word counts | So the app can suggest your most-used words and remember recent sentences. Stored only on our server tied to your account; never shared. | Until you clear it in the app, or delete your account. |
| Generated audio cache (per voice + word) | So repeated taps of the same word play instantly without re-generating. | Until an admin clears it or you delete the word. |
| Feedback you submit | So we can read it and improve the app. | Until an admin deletes it. |
| Login attempts (IP + count) | To rate-limit brute-force attempts. | Cleared after a successful login or after the lockout window expires. |
What we do not store
- No tracking pixels, no advertising IDs, no behavioural profiling.
- No third-party analytics (no Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, no Mixpanel, etc.).
- No social-media sign-in, no contact-list scraping.
- We don't read or scan the contents of your sentences for marketing purposes.
Third parties — being honest
openbmb/VoxCPM-Demo. Whenever a word is tapped that hasn't been generated for that voice yet, the text of that word and the URL of the voice's reference audio sample are sent to that Space to synthesise the speech. The audio that comes back is then cached on our server, so future plays don't hit Hugging Face again.
If you'd rather avoid that, your options are:
- Set your voice source to Device default in Settings → Voice (uses your phone/tablet's built-in speech engine — no third party at all).
- Or use only words that have already been cached (these never leave our server).
Cookies
We set one cookie: aac_sess, a session cookie that keeps you signed in. It is HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Lax. No other cookies, no advertising or analytics cookies.
Hosting & security
The app runs on a single dedicated server we operate ourselves. Connections are over HTTPS only. Login codes are stored in a private MySQL database that is not accessible from the internet. Photos you upload are stored on the same server filesystem and are not publicly indexed.
🗑️ Deleting your account
You can ask for your account to be deleted at any time. Email jason@monkeycode.co.uk from the email address you signed up with, with the subject "Delete my account". We'll remove:
- Your user record (name, email, code, ID, settings).
- All custom words, hidden words, photos, sentence history, and word counts.
- Any feedback you submitted.
The generated audio cache is shared across users (keyed by the spoken text and voice, not the user) so it isn't tied to you and stays in place. We'll do the deletion within 7 days.
📫 Contact
Questions, complaints, or data requests: jason@monkeycode.co.uk.