Text Chat

The Grid 2 provides quick and accurate text communication for literate users.

Grids can be simple typing grids, or more complicated setups with stored messages and prediction.

Write sentences by spelling words or selecting complete words, and then speak them aloud.

You can type using:

• a physical keyboard (including adapted keyboards such as BigKeys)
• a keyboard grid, displaying a keyboard on the screen
• grids with complete words or phrases

Storing messages

The Grid 2 allows the you to create, edit, store and recall 1000's of messages.  When you have written some text that you want to store, you can save it to your message list.  To locate a message later, just start typing one of the words in the message and The Grid 2 will find your message for you.

You can also save up to 10 separate message lists.  One example for using this is in different social situations (at home, at work, at the shops, etc).

Writing tools 

The Grid 2 has a number of tools to help write more quickly and accurately.

Choose your keyboard layout

You can decide how to arrange the keyboard. 

• Typists used to a computer keyboard may prefer a qwerty layout
• Early leaners may find it easier with an alphabetical keyboard
• Many switch users have frequency-of-use layouts, with the most commonly used letters available in the least time
• If you need really big cells (e.g. for some eye-gaze or touch screen users) you can even divide the letters between a number of different grids
• People using auditory feedback might have a the alphabet split into rows, each row starting with a vowel

Prediction

As you type, The Grid 2 can suggest the word that you are typing.  The Grid 2 can display symbols next to words and suggested words can be spoken aloud to help with word finding and identification. 

The Grid 2's advanced prediction system learns as you write, so words that you use regularly are given higher priority. You can choose to spell-check the prediction automatically to avoid it learning mistakes, and you can edit the prediction dictionary to add or remove words.

TouchType

The Grid 2.7 features the fantastic TouchType writing system.  It works just like predictive text on a mobile phone, giving users access to the whole alphabet on a grid with as few as 8 cells.  This gives Grid 2 users the ability to create sentences faster and more accurately than with more traditional grid layouts.

As with a mobile phone, The Grid 2 will work out the most likely word that is being spelled out by the user and enter it into the sentence bar.  You can easily choose a different word if the one suggested isn't the one that you want.

TouchType can be integrated into any communication system using The Grid 2 and as with all features of The Grid 2, TouchType can be customised to create the best solution for each individual user.

Sounds-like

Using phonetic matching, The Grid 2 can suggest words that sound similar to a word that you have typed, which can be a great way to help find the right word.

Spelled-like

The Grid 2 can suggest words with a similar spelling to the one you are writing.

Verb morphology

You can display the different versions of a verb to aid correct grammar.  Symbols can help to identify the parts of a verb and get correct verb agreement.

Out-of-the-box flexibility

The Grid 2 comes with ready-made grids for text communication.  You can also purchase popular communication vocabularies such as WordPower. 

You can also create your own grids or edit the provided grids to create your perfect text communication system.  You can make a grid with the things that you need on it, and link to other grids with other useful options - friends names, alternate word lists, or the option of sending your writing as an email or text message.