September 7, 2026 · current

AAC Folder Navigation — Vendor Alignment Check for ADR 009

Verifies the five ADR 009 navigation/taxonomy decisions against how Proloquo2Go, TD Snap Core First, TouchChat/WordPower, LAMP Words for Life, Grid 3/Super Core, CoughDrop and Avaz handle folder overflow, alphabetical ordering, body-state words, pronouns/wh-words and Places. Four decisions match field practice; nesting body states inside Feelings diverges from the dominant separate Body/Health pattern. Addendum verifies the v2.4.1 page-1 priority order against published core-vocabulary lists and vendor first-page rules.

Oso Voice research — 2026-09-07. Adam asked, mid-execution of ADR 009 (docs/decisions/009-semantic-subfolders-no-alphabetical-splits.md), that the folder and navigation direction be checked against what established AAC vendors and speech-language pathologists already do: the app should align with the field, and differentiate on build quality, settings and VoicePack Studio rather than on novel vocabulary organization. This pass answers five questions per vendor from vendor documentation, manuals and support articles (web research by a Sonnet agent, 2026-09-07; sources footnoted). It extends docs/research/2026-08-23-aac-category-organization-research.md, which covered within-category taxonomy but not overflow mechanics or the placement of body states, pronouns and places.

Confidence tags: [vendor-doc] read directly from vendor material; [practitioner] SLP/practitioner source; [secondary] blog or third-party summary; [not found] searched, no usable source.

Headline

  1. No surveyed vendor labels a child-facing folder by letter range. Proloquo2Go and Grid 3 handle overflow with an explicit “More” cell or arrow in fixed semantic order — the closest precedent to ADR 009’s pagination [vendor-doc]. TD Snap scrolls vertically; WordPower uses a continuation arrow to a second page; LAMP has no pagination at all (fixed branching layers).
  2. Alphabetical order does appear, but only as a within-page sort, never as a folder label: TD Snap’s word lists default to alphabetical [vendor-doc], WordPower alphabetizes within a category and literally labels an overflow page “A-Z” [vendor-doc], Grid 3 offers an optional Sort A–Z toggle [vendor-doc]. Proloquo2Go and Avaz are explicitly semantic, not alphabetical [vendor-doc].
  3. Body-state words (sick, hurt, tired, hot, cold) most often live in a separate Body/Health category, not inside Feelings: TD Snap “Body and Health”, WordPower “BODY/HEALTH” (for hurt), Grid 3 “Health”, LAMP’s separate “toiletries/sick” layer [vendor-doc]. The counter-examples are partial: WordPower’s Feelings “I feel ___” prompts include hungry and tired; Avaz groups tired/unwell within Feelings [secondary].
  4. Pronouns and question words are core/home vocabulary everywhere a source was found — Proloquo2Go’s Pronouns and Questions tabs, TD Snap’s color-coded core page, WordPower’s main page plus a QUESTIONS folder, LAMP’s home-screen pronoun column, Grid 3 Extended Core, Avaz core [vendor-doc]. A supplementary fringe People folder sometimes exists for depth, never as the pronouns’ primary home.
  5. A Places folder is standard and no vendor files places under a generic Objects/Things folder. WordPower’s PLACES has sub-links (buildings, home, outside, school, stores); LAMP splits places across three categories rather than having one; CoughDrop ships location boards instead [vendor-doc]/[secondary].
  6. No numeric guidance on words per page or pages per folder was found from ASHA, PrAACtical AAC, AssistiveWare or Tobii Dynavox. PrAACtical AAC says display size must be individualized to visual, cognitive and motor factors [practitioner]; AssistiveWare argues against artificially small grids for beginners [vendor-doc].

Vendor comparison

Vendor Folder overflow Letter-range / alpha Body-state words Pronouns & wh-words Places
Proloquo2Go (AssistiveWare) Bottom-right arrow to a “More” secondary page; semantic order, frequency first [1][2] No letter ranges; not alphabetized by default [5][6] [not found] — Feelings sits under “Describing words”; body-state placement unconfirmed [7] Dedicated Pronouns and Questions tabs, core-reachable [5] Places folder (fringe tier); School and Buy/Sell separate top folders [8][9]
TD Snap Core First (Tobii Dynavox) Infinite vertical scroll with indicators; default “block flow” can reposition buttons, fixed motor plan needs the Motor Plan page set [12][13] No letter ranges; alphabetical is the stated default within word lists [14] Dedicated “Body and Health” category, distinct from Feelings [14] Pronouns and question words color-coded on core page; fringe People/Questions lists also exist [14] “Places” top-level list confirmed; contents unconfirmed [14]
TouchChat + WordPower (PRC-Saltillo) Top-right arrow to continuation pages (“ACTIONS A-Z”, two-page DESCRIBE); vendor states motor-plan stability across pages [15][16][17] No letter-range folder names; within-category alphabetization standard; overflow page labeled “A-Z” [16][17] “hurt” on BODY/HEALTH page; hungry/tired in Feelings “I feel ___” prompts; sick/hot/cold unconfirmed [16] High-frequency pronouns on main page; PEOPLE page for the rest; QUESTIONS its own folder [16][17] PLACES with sub-links (buildings, home, outside, school) plus STORES [16]
LAMP Words for Life (PRC-Saltillo) No pagination; fixed branching layers; ALL CAPS marks a sub-layer; GO BACK only [18][19] No letter ranges; one food sub-layer alphabetized [19] Split: “feelings” vs “toiletries/sick”; tired/hot surface as adjective outputs of unrelated icons [18][19] Pronouns fixed on home screen (left column); wh-words via one home icon [18][19] No unified Places; split across nature/places, stores/community, rooms/buildings [18]
Grid 3 / Super Core (Smartbox) Word-list cells auto-add a “More cell” on overflow; cross-grid positional consistency by design [21][22] No letter ranges; semantic default; optional Sort A–Z toggle [22][23] Distinct “Health” category; some body-state words (hot) under Describe > “Feels and tastes”; no dedicated Feelings category found [24][25][27] Extended Core People (pronouns) and Questions via jumps; some pronouns on main grid [25][26] Default “Places” topic grid confirmed [24]
CoughDrop [not found] [not found] [not found] [not found] No single Places folder; location boards (playground, library, home, classroom) shipped separately [secondary]
Avaz Frozen row of core folders fixed across contexts; per-folder overflow control unconfirmed [31] Explicitly semantic, not alphabetical [32] Feelings page groups tired/unwell within it [secondary] Pronouns and wh-words are core/home vocabulary [33][34] No prebuilt Places folder; caregiver-built per-environment folders [35]

Alignment verdict against ADR 009

  • (a) Fixed-order “More” pagination instead of letter-range sibling folders — matches. No vendor uses letter-range labels; Proloquo2Go and Grid 3 use a More cell/arrow in fixed order.
  • (b) One-level semantic subfolders for food, people, places, feelings, descriptors — matches, minor nuance. Dominant pattern everywhere except LAMP’s multi-layer branching; a few vendors go two levels for overflow (WordPower Places > Stores), so one level is slightly tighter than the loosest vendor but well within norms.
  • (c) sick, hurt, tired, hot, cold nested inside Feelings as “my body feels” — diverges. The stronger cross-vendor pattern is a separate Body/Health category at the same level as Feelings. Partial precedent for nesting exists (WordPower’s Feelings prompts, Avaz). Decision referred back to Adam; see ADR 009 §(c) for the ruling and its reasoning.
  • (d) Pronouns and wh-words in core vocabulary, not a fringe People folder — matches strongly.
  • (e) home, school, park, store under Places, not Objects — matches. The only deviation found is LAMP having no single Places folder, never Objects as a catch-all.

Implications for Oso Voice

  • The Oso Voice-specific fact that shapes (c): Oso Voice has no top-level Body/Health category, and Feelings is one of the two Home-trio folders (ADR 008), so a body-state subfolder inside Feelings is two hops from Home while a new tenth category would sit behind Words (three to four hops, and paginated at 3×3). The vendors with a separate Body/Health category place it at the same depth as Feelings; Oso Voice cannot do that without changing the Home trio. So the divergence is a depth trade-off, not a disagreement about what the words are.
  • TD Snap’s “block flow” repositioning and WordPower’s explicit stability-across-pages statement both reinforce ADR 006: fixed order across pages is the field’s stated expectation where it is stated at all.
  • The within-page alphabetical sorts (TD Snap, WordPower, Grid 3 toggle) are literacy-oriented conveniences for older or literate users; ADR 009 keeps curated position order instead, which is the motor-planning choice and consistent with Proloquo2Go and Avaz.

Primary sources

[1] assistiveware.com/support/proloquo2go/basics/search · [2] download.assistiveware.com — “Proloquo2Go: how can I find the words” PDF · [3] assistiveware.com/blog/progressive-language · [4] assistiveware.com/crescendo · [5] assistiveware.com/blog/how-is-the-vocabulary-in-proloquo-organized · [6] assistiveware.com/blog/how-can-i-use-proloquo-to-teach-categories · [7] assistiveware.com/blog/how-are-adjectives-and-adverbs-organized-in-proloquo · [8] assistiveware.com/blog/fringe-words-in-proloquo · [9] assistiveware.com/blog/designing-a-comprehensive-and-inclusive-vocabulary-for-proloquo · [10] assistiveware.com/blog/why-does-proloquo-have-a-fixed-grid-size · [11] assistiveware.com/learn-aac/choosing-a-grid-size · [12] tobiidynavox.com/blogs/support-articles/understanding-pages-and-button-grids-in-td-snap · [13] tobiidynavox.com/pages/td-snap-motor-plan · [14] download.mytobiidynavox.com/Snap/documents/TobiiDynavox_CoreFirst_English_PageSet_Guide_v1-1_en-US_WEB.pdf · [15] touchchatapp.com/assets/uploads/TouchChat_App_Manual-v102-en-us.pdf · [16] liberator.co.uk/media/wysiwyg/Documents/WordPower_Manual_for_Accent.pdf · [17] touchchatapp.com/assets/uploads/19784v1_02-WordPower_Vocab_QRG.pdf · [18] lampwflapp.com/pdf/17909v1.2-LAMP WFL Vocab Quick Reference.pdf · [19] aaclanguagelab.com/materials/LAMP_WFL_vocabulary_workbook_US2.pdf · [21] thinksmartbox.com/answer/word-lists-in-grid-3 · [22] hub.thinksmartbox.com/knowledgebase/semantic-layout · [23] hub.thinksmartbox.com/knowledgebase/how-do-i-change-the-sort-order-of-a-word-list · [24] hub.thinksmartbox.com/knowledgebase/personalising-super-core · [25] hub.thinksmartbox.com/knowledgebase/extended-core · [26] hub.thinksmartbox.com/knowledgebase/using-super-core · [27] thinksmartbox.com/news/accessible-apps-and-new-vocabulary-in-super-core · [31] avazapp.com/blog/frozen-row-in-avaz-aac-keeping-words-within-reach · [32] avazapp.com/blog/how-vocabulary-layout-shapes-communication-a-peek-inside-avaz-aac · [33] avazapp.freshdesk.com (core-words article) · [34] avazapp.com/blog/core-word-ideas · [35] everyday.avazapp.com/blog/making-it-work-implementing-aac-at-home · [36] praacticalaac.org/finding-my-words-considerations-in-language-displays-and-organization · [37] littlewords.ai/blog/aac-device-buttons (secondary, non-authoritative)

Confidence ladder

  • [vendor-doc] WordPower manual and QRG, LAMP WFL quick reference and workbook, TD Snap Core First page-set guide, AssistiveWare support and blog pages, Smartbox knowledge-base pages.
  • [practitioner] PrAACtical AAC on individualizing display size.
  • [secondary] Avaz body-state grouping; CoughDrop location boards; the 15–42-cell starting-range figure (non-authoritative, not relied on).
  • [not found] Proloquo2Go’s exact body-state placement; CoughDrop’s folder overflow and organization; any published numeric words-per-page or pages-per-folder guidance for young children; home/park/store membership of Proloquo2Go’s, TD Snap’s or Grid 3’s Places folders.

Addendum (2026-09-07, later) — page-1 priority order vs. core-vocabulary evidence

After Adam ratified the ADR 009 clinical audit’s recommendation to curate a page-1 order inside every oversized subfolder (rule: highest-frequency, earliest-developing words first; words already on Home or the toolbar yield their page-1 slot to words reachable nowhere else), a Sonnet research pass checked the proposed picks before they shipped in v2.4.1.

Vendor first-page practice. AssistiveWare documents the rule directly, in two posts: “the most frequently used words on the first page of each tab” and, for fringe folders, “words like mom, dad, baby, and friend … are on the first page of People” [vendor-doc] (assistiveware.com/blog/how-is-the-vocabulary-in-proloquo-organized; assistiveware.com/blog/fringe-words-in-proloquo). Smartbox Super Core states that locations were “decided based on the frequency of words within core vocabulary research” [vendor-doc, snippet only — page fetch blocked]. No written first-page rule was found for TD Snap Core First or PRC-Saltillo [not found]. Oso Voice’s rule therefore matches the only vendor with a verifiable written rule and the stated intent of a second.

Core-word picks vs. published lists. Checked against Banajee, DiCarlo & Buras Stricklin (2003) 23-word toddler core [peer-reviewed, via secondary sources; primary paywalled], Marvin, Beukelman & Bilyeu (1994) 331-word preschool core [peer-reviewed, full text read], and Project Core Universal Core 36 [vendor-doc/peer-reviewed]. DLM First 40 and Boenisch & Soto (2015) word sets [not found — paywalled/dead links]. Every word the rule demoted to page 2 for reachability (eat, drink, go, come, stop, do, get, make, play, put, like, look, want, more, help, please, yes, no, what, who, I, you, it, this, that) is a confirmed core-list member, so the demotions are for reachability, not frequency. No swap candidates in wants & needs, manners, answers & asking, people words, where words, when words, everyday routines, or playing & doing.

Swaps applied to the ratified order (a page-2 word appeared on more lists or in earlier-acquired norms than a page-1 word in the same subfolder):

Subfolder In Out Basis
actions > moving fall, move dance, swim fall/move on Marvin 1994; dance/swim on none
actions > feelings & thinking know, find smile, share know/find on Marvin 1994; none of the seven picks were
objects > animals duck pig duck is a top early animal word in large-scale CDI first-words data (Wordbank); [practitioner] confidence
objects > my body nose hands nose is a classic early body word; [practitioner] confidence, no numeric norm retrieved

Low-confidence single-list ties (show vs. listen/talk; use vs. draw/write/color/cook) were left as proposed. Fenson/Wordbank numeric age-of-acquisition percentages could not be retrieved (interactive tool, not scrapable) [not found]; mom, dad, ball, water, book as top picks are supported by CDI norms cited in secondary literature [peer-reviewed-adjacent].

Verdict. The page-1 order aligns with field practice and the available evidence. The final ratified order is the content of Studio’s scripts/page-order.json at the v2.4.1 commit, mirrored in ADR 009’s Amendments.

Addendum (2026-10-04): folder-cell imagery across vendors — sourcing for ADR 010

Question: does a folder / category / link cell carry a representative picture symbol (e.g. a smiley on “Feelings”), and how is it distinguished from a word cell? Web research 2026-10-04 (vendor support pages first). Evidence tags: [vendor-doc], [screenshot], [secondary], [not found]. No screenshots were inspected this pass, so no [screenshot] tags.

Verdict on the ADR 009 audit’s claim that “every surveyed vendor’s folder cell carries a representative picture”: MOSTLY. Three vendors are vendor-documented as giving folders an image (Proloquo2Go, Proloquo, Avaz), Grid 3 and CoughDrop are consistent with it but not folder-specific, and three (TD Snap, TouchChat, LAMP WFL) could not be sourced, so “every” is unconfirmed.

Vendor Symbol on folder cell How folder is distinguished Evidence
Proloquo2Go Yes (auto-suggested from folder name, changeable) Folder shape; shading at top like a filing-cabinet folder [vendor-doc]
Proloquo Mixed-to-yes (image selectable; can be toggled off) Shape plus a colored bar at top; folder’s own label button sits top-left inside [vendor-doc]
TouchChat / WordPower Not found Not found [not found]
TD Snap Core First Not found for folders Colored outlines encode word class/comment type (Questions blue, etc.), not folder-ness [not found]
LAMP Words for Life Not found One secondary snippet says buttons with arrows navigate; unverified [secondary]
Grid 3 / Super Core Yes in general (each cell has word + symbol); folder-specific not stated Small triangle in cell corner; blue jump cells [vendor-doc] partial, [secondary]
CoughDrop Not folder-specific (buttons carry images generally) Default: highlighted upper-right corner; optional preference swaps in a folder icon [vendor-doc] (support title/snippet; page returned 403 on fetch)
Avaz Yes (default library symbol assigned on creation; changeable or custom photo) Folder icon default light green (older versions); background color follows Fitzgerald word type (v6.6+) [vendor-doc]

Per-vendor notes

Guidance on which symbol a folder carries, and folder-vs-word confusion

  • Symbol choice: no vendor guidance found. Proloquo2Go and Avaz auto-suggest a symbol from the folder name (a label-derived default, user-overridable); Proloquo documents no recommendation. No vendor source says “use the first word” or “use a category icon” and none was found that derives the symbol from the folder’s contents.
  • Confusion in children: no vendor mention of folder-versus-word confusion found. Vendors instead rely on a shape/shading cue (Proloquo2Go, Proloquo), a corner marker (Grid 3, CoughDrop) or color (Avaz, TD Snap), which implies the distinction is treated as a visual-cue problem.
  • Takeaway for ADR 010: the common non-picture cue is a structural mark (shape, top bar, corner triangle), not the symbol itself. Gaps remain for TouchChat, TD Snap and LAMP; verify with screenshots or the vendors’ installed apps before citing them.

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