Soundable Hosts International Phonetic Alphabet Competition

October 1, 2014 — Vancouver, BC: Tactus Therapy Solutions and LessonPix, the makers of Soundable, today announced a nationwide competition for students and professionals using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The competition, which runs from October 1 to November 30, 2014, offers a fun way to practice transcribing words using IPA, a critical skill taught in linguistics and speech-language pathology training programs.

Soundable, a free app for iPhone, is a social crossword game like Scrabble but words are made by playing sound tiles instead of letter tiles. There are 41 sounds in the game: 24 consonants, 10 pure vowels, 2 r-colored vowels, and 5 vowel diphthongs plus 2 blank tiles. The goal of this year’s tournament, which is being held in conjunction with an app update, is to provide phonetics students with a fun way to study.

The latest version of Soundable includes:
• Chat: Comment on your opponent’s moves or boast about your own brilliance — all in real time with the option of doing it in IPA; and,
• Random opponent: When linguistically oriented friends are scarce, you can still play by selecting this option.

“While there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, there are more than 40 sounds. Knowing the sounds and how they’re made — manner, place, and voicing — makes it easier to understand why a person may have trouble saying “child” /tʃaɪld/ but not “baby” /bebi/,” says Megan S. Sutton, MS, CCC-SLP (C), Tactus Therapy Solutions founder, app designer, director and practicing speech-language pathologist.

“The app has several features to help students learn IPA by giving the sound, listing key words for each sound, and being able to switch back and forth between IPA and more traditional phonics tiles.”

“The response to this game has been fantastic because it works on so many levels,” adds Bill Binko, COO of LessonPix. “It’s fun, it’s by far the easiest way to learn the IPA, and from our perspective, it’s great for our product quality. Having this many SLPs constantly playing the game has dramatically improved the effectiveness of our SoundFinder tools: every time a player appeals a word or adds a pronunciation, that’s one more step towards having the most accurate phonetic database on the web.”

Contestants who post screenshots of their game highlights on the Soundable Users’ Group on Facebook (www.facebook.com/groups/soundableusers/) or send entries by email to info@soundablegame.com will be eligible to win prizes in three categories:

• Favorite word, as voted by other users
• Longest word
• Highest-scoring play

To register for the contest or for more information, go to www.soundablegame.com.

About Soundable: Soundable is a crossword game for friends who can’t spell. Download this FREE sound-based word game on the App Store to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) while having fun. Soundable is a joint venture between Tactus Therapy Solutions, a leading provider of therapy apps for the adult speech therapy market, and LessonPix.com, whose SoundFinder technology powers the game. www.soundablegame.com

About Tactus Therapy Solutions:
Tactus Therapy aims to provide a better stroke recovery journey. Founded in 2011, we believe in building relationships between people and technology to enhance the therapeutic process and empower stroke survivors to direct their own recovery. The company offers a wide range of speech, language, and cognitive rehab applications, which are designed by a speech-language pathologist. “Tactus” means touch in Latin, and the touch screen is what makes Tactus Therapy Solutions unique and so easy to use. www.tactustherapy.com

About LessonPix:
Founded in 2009, LessonPix provides online visuals and materials for teachers, parents, therapists and speech-language pathologist (SLPs) with an ever-growing library of original high-quality scalable artwork (currently over 20,000 symbols) and powerful tools to leverage them in the classroom and home. Their unique SoundFinder and its related tools provide SLPs with the ability to easily “Search by Sounds not Letters” and make games, materials, and AAC overlays to support their therapy goals. www.lessonpix.com

Soundable the Sound-Based Word Game is Now Available

Palm Harbor, FL (May 14, 2014) There’s a new word game in town, and this one has a unique twist: it’s great for people who can’t spell! Soundable, a new social word game, looks like Scrabble or Words With Friends at first glance, until you notice the funny letters on the tiles.

“Soundable is based on the sounds in words, not the letters,” explains Megan Sutton, MS, CCC-SLP, founder of Tactus Therapy Solutions and one of the game’s designers. “Each of our tiles represents a single sound or phoneme, and they build words regardless of how English spells them. The same ‘SH’ sound we spell with the ‘S-H’ letters in ‘Ship’ is also present in ‘Ocean’, ‘Motion’, and ‘Session’. In Soundable, you can use the same tile in any of those situations.”

If you think it’s dumbing down the game, think again: the main driver for the game is actually supporting higher education. In fact, the game’s primary market is current and future Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) and other professionals who need to learn the International Phonetic Language, or IPA.

“We’ve needed something like this for a long time,” explained Tanya Coyle, MSc, S-LP(C) who currently teaches phonology at Lambton College. “It’s really important that new speech and language professionals know the IPA well and this will offer a fun, easy way to practice. I can’t wait to get my hands on it and share it with my students!”

The game is a joint venture between Tactus Therapy Solutions, a leading provider of therapy apps for the speech therapy market, and LessonPix.com, whose SoundFinder technology powers the scoring of the game.

To keep the game free, Soundable is ad-supported, with a special focus on ads targeting speech-language professionals. For example, one of the game’s launch sponsors is ProxTalker, which makes AAC devices that help non-verbal children with autism communicate. Glen Dobbs, president of Proxtalker, sees a great opportunity for speech-related vendors. “There are hundreds of companies that spend a ton of money going to conventions and other venues to show our products to SLPs. To have a chance to reach them when they are engaged and having fun with other SLPs makes this an easy decision. I think it’s a great idea, and I hope it’s a huge success.”

Soundable can be downloaded today from the iPhone App Store or by visiting SoundableGame.com.

About LessonPix, Inc.
: Founded in 2009, LessonPix provides online visuals and materials for teachers, parents, therapists and speech-language pathologist (SLPs) with an ever-growing library of original high-quality scalable artwork (currently over 20,000 symbols) and powerful tools to leverage them in the classroom and home. Their unique SoundFinder and its related tools provide SLPs with the ability to easily “Search by Sounds not Letters”
and make games, materials, and AAC overlays to support their therapy goals.

For More Information Contact:

Bill Binko, COO LessonPix, Inc.(727) 437-2465
 http://lessonpix.com

About Tactus Therapy Solutions Ltd.: Founded in 2011, Tactus Therapy creates apps to be used by people of all ages to improve their communication skills in rehabilitation and education settings around the world. Designed by a Speech-Language Pathologist, Tactus Therapy apps aim to help professionals ease their workload with quality materials and data collecting and reporting tools, while enhancing the therapy of clients by providing more opportunities to practice outside the clinic. These apps are favorites among adults who have an acquired brain injury and children with special needs. For more information, download the free Lite versions of each app or visit http://tactustherapy.com.