Phonics keyboard

Also called Sound keyboard, Grapheme keyboard, Phoneme keyboard, Sound-by-sound keyboard

A keyboard of sounds rather than letters, so a word can be built the way it is heard, before the person knows how it is spelled.

What it is

A phonics keyboard lays out the sounds of English rather than its 26 letters. Each key is a grapheme, a letter or group of letters that stands for one sound: "sh", "ch", "ai", "igh", "oo", "ck" alongside the single letters. Tap "sh", "o", "p" and the device speaks "shop". The person builds the word from what they hear, and the spelling comes with it.

English has about 44 sounds and well over a hundred common ways to write them, which is why the full UK grapheme set makes for a large keyboard, and why it is organised by sound rather than alphabetically.

Who it can help

Children learning to read and write through synthetic phonics, which is every child in an English primary school, and who can therefore already segment "dog" into three sounds long before they can spell "enough". Non-speaking children in that phase, for whom a sound-by-sound keyboard is a way to say a word they have never seen written. Adults with aphasia who have lost written spelling but retain sound, and people with dyslexia for whom mapping sound to letter group directly removes a step.

It is not for someone who spells fluently; a letter keyboard is faster for them. And it does not teach phonics by itself: it lets a person use the phonics they are being taught.

How it works

The person hears a word in their head, splits it into sounds (segmenting), and finds the key for each sound in order. The device speaks each sound as it is chosen, then blends them and speaks the word. Because the keys are graphemes, the letters that appear on the strip are a plausible spelling; where English offers several ("ai", "ay", "a-e"), the person picks one and is usually understood even when it isn't the dictionary spelling.

Layouts follow the phonics phases used in schools, so the sounds a child meets first are the easiest to reach. See phonemes and graphemes for the underlying terms, and word by word or sound by sound for when each approach fits.

Getting started

Open the Talk board and switch to its phonics keyboard, which uses the full UK grapheme set. Build a word the child is learning this week at school, sound by sound, and let the device say it. Then hand it over.

Match the school. Ask which phonics programme the class uses and which sounds have been taught so far, and stay within them at home; a child who is being taught "ai" this week should not be searching for "a-e".

Use the words the child wants, not the scheme's word list. "Dinosaur" built sound by sound is worth more than ten "cat"s.

Where to get help

The Department for Education's reading framework sets out how phonics is taught in England, and the school's phonics lead will know the child's phase. A speech and language therapist can advise on using phonics with a non-speaking child, and ACE Centre publishes guidance on literacy for AAC users. The British Dyslexia Association supports people for whom sound-based spelling helps.