The real cost of augmentative and alternative communication
The price of a communication tool often decides whether it truly reaches the person who needs it. Between dedicated devices, tablet applications and funding routes, the real amounts remain hard to compare.
The price of a communication tool is never a detail: it decides whether a family, a school or a hospital ward can obtain one on the day the need appears. Dedicated speech-generating devices and the applications on the market show very different prices, when they show a price at all.
A price rarely displayed
Tobii Dynavox, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of speech-generating devices, shows no price on the pages of its dedicated devices, such as the TD Snap or the eye-controlled TD I-Series: as recorded on 13 August 2026, every product page consulted led to a quotation request or to a reseller. A price on quotation is not a hidden price; it is a price that cannot be compared before a procedure has been started.
No page consulted on the manufacturer’s website shows an amount, whichever device is chosen. This absence of a public price complicates any comparison for a family that is only beginning to look, long before knowing which source of funding to turn to.
An application at a fixed price
Conversely, an AAC application installed on a mainstream tablet shows a fixed, public price. Proloquo2Go, a reference application developed by AssistiveWare, was shown, as recorded on 13 August 2026, at 299.99 dollars in the United States and 299.99 euros in the euro area. A version for Mac computers was shown at 149.99 euros. These amounts come from a dated record: a price is checked at the source before it is repeated.
What national solidarity funds, in France
In France, the disability compensation benefit, the prestation de compensation du handicap, can fund part of the purchase price of a communication aid, subject to agreement from the departmental centre for disabled people. The rate commonly quoted for technical aids is 75%, but it depends on the type of aid, on income and on the decision of the commission: it cannot be presumed. The exact conditions are set out on the reference pages cited at the foot of this article, and they change.
Even with that funding, families are generally left with a share to pay, once agreement has been obtained. The Caisse nationale de solidarité pour l’autonomie also funded, in 2022, six projects to equip resource centres with communication aids.
What health insurance covers, in the United States
In the United States, Medicare classes speech-generating devices as durable medical equipment, funded under several dedicated billing codes. Cover requires an assessment by a speech-language pathologist, a medical consultation establishing the need for the device, and a written order before any delivery. Before 2015, the regulations allowed only the rental of these devices, capped in time. The law known as the Steve Gleason Act opened the possibility of outright purchase that year, a sign that these devices had until then been treated as too expensive to be simply bought.
What being free changes
A price on quotation and an application to be put before a commission: these administrative steps delay access to a communication tool, sometimes by several months. Assessment by a professional, for its part, is not an obstacle and we do not present it as one: it is what makes it possible to choose the tool that suits a person, and it remains desirable. What a tool immediately available in a browser changes is the waiting time before someone can say something, not the value of that professional support.
The same delay weighs on a school taking in a new pupil part way through the year, or on a ward receiving a person who does not speak the language of the country: none of these situations leaves time to wait for an assessment, an order, or a delivery. Being free does not replace a dedicated device in the situations that genuinely need one, but it removes the waiting where plain access is enough.
| Solution | Price or funding |
|---|---|
| AAC application on a tablet (Proloquo2Go) | 299.99 dollars or 299.99 euros, as a one-off purchase |
| Dedicated eye-controlled device (example: Tobii Dynavox) | Price given on quotation from the manufacturer only |
| AAC technical aid in France | up to 75% of the price, according to the decision of the commission, subject to MDPH agreement |
| Speech-generating device in the United States | Covered by Medicare as durable medical equipment, under conditions |
| Words Within Reach | Free, no account, no application to be filed |
None of these amounts measures the value of the need that a communication tool comes to meet. They measure only the distance, sometimes long, between that need and the moment when a person finally obtains a means of saying what they have to say.
Sources
- Devices - assistive communication solutions, Tobii Dynavox.
- Proloquo2Go, AssistiveWare.
- Amélioration de la prise en charge financière des appareils de communication alternative améliorée, question écrite n° 21071758S, Sénat.
- Constitution de parcs d’aides techniques pour la communication alternative et améliorée, CNSA.
- Medicare Coverage Policy on Speech-Generating Devices, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
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