Privacy Policy

The short version

Talk has no account, no server and no analytics, and we never receive anything you say.

Your words stay on your device. They leave it only if you switch on one of the optional services below, add your own key for it and use it: Polish, which tidies your words with an AI service you choose, or your own ElevenLabs voice. Speak to type, if you use it, turns your voice into text with your device's own speech recognition. Each of these sends the words straight from your device to that service, never to us.

Who we are

Fiducia Talk is made by Fiducia Together Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17428906, registered office 9 Merlin Grove, Leyland, England, PR25 1DA. For the purposes of UK data protection law we are the data controller for the little information described here.

For anything on this page, write to privacy@fiduciatogether.uk.

What we collect: nothing

We do not ask for a name, an email address, an age or an account. There is no sign-up, no sign-in and no profile. We hold no record that you or the person using Talk exists, and we could not identify a Talk user if we were asked to.

What stays on the device

Talk keeps its settings on the device it is installed on, and nowhere else:
— the chosen voice, and its pitch and speed, and the languages the board speaks;
— the board's own settings — layout, size, look, scanning and access options;
— any cards or vocabulary added on that device, with their pictures and any recording made of how a card's word is said;
— if you use them, the key for your AI service and the key for your ElevenLabs voice, kept in the device's secure storage (the Keychain on an iPhone or iPad), and any of your ElevenLabs voice kept on the device for use offline.

The cards Talk starts with are bundled inside the app itself, which is what lets it work with no server at all. Sentences spoken through Talk are not recorded, stored as a history, or sent anywhere, except as described under Optional services.

The microphone

Talk uses the microphone only when you ask it to: when you press Record while making one of your own cards, to capture how that card's word is said, and when you press Start speaking in Speak to type. Your device or browser asks your permission first, and you can refuse it or take it back at any time: everything else in Talk works without it.

A card's recording is kept on the device, beside its card. It is played when the card is spoken, and deleted when the card is. It is never uploaded.

Speak to type turns what you say into text using the speech recognition built into your device. On an iPhone or iPad that is Apple's speech recognition, which may send the audio to Apple to be recognised, under Apple's own privacy policy; on Android it is your device's speech service. Talk does not keep the audio, and does not listen at any other time — not while the board is open, and not in the background.

Optional services

Talk works fully without any of these. Each is off until somebody switches it on by adding a key.

Polish turns a message, or what you dictated, into a tidy sentence, and shows it to you before anything changes. Where your iPhone or iPad has Apple Intelligence, Polish uses Apple's model on the device itself, and nothing leaves it. Otherwise you can add your own key for an AI service you choose: Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google (Gemini), Mistral, or another service at an address you give. When you press Polish, the words being polished go from your device to that service, and its answer comes back. They are handled under your agreement with that service and its privacy policy, not ours, and some services may keep them for a time. We never see them, and no key is built into Talk.

Your own ElevenLabs voice lets the board speak in a voice you made or chose at ElevenLabs. When it speaks, the words go from your device to ElevenLabs with your key, and the sound comes back; you can keep it on the device so the voice works offline. This is handled under your agreement with ElevenLabs and its privacy policy.

To stop either, remove the key in Talk's settings.

The Fiducia keyboards

Talk can also be your keyboard in other apps. The keyboards keep nothing you type and log nothing. On an iPhone or iPad they ask for Full Access, which iOS needs before a keyboard can use the internet; Talk's keyboards use it for one thing only, sending the words in the text box to your own AI service when you press Polish. Without Full Access every key still types.

The network

Talk makes no network request of its own while you use it. It connects to something else only when you ask it to:
— an optional service you have switched on with your own key, when you press Polish or the board speaks in your ElevenLabs voice (see Optional services);
— your device's speech recognition, when you use Speak to type;
— the link on the house promotion, or Rate Talk, which open our website or the App Store if you tap them.

There is no analytics, no advertising SDK, no crash reporting and no third-party tracker in the app. Nothing you do in Talk is measured or reported anywhere.

This website

This site sets at most two small cookies, and only if you choose to: one remembers the reading and accessibility settings you pick in the toolkit, and one remembers your answer to the cookie notice so it is not shown again. Neither identifies you or follows you to another site, and neither is set until you choose. There is no advertising or analytics script.

Our web server necessarily receives your IP address and the time of the request in order to send the page back. It counts visits from that request log on our own server, with no script in your browser, and uses the log only to serve and secure the site.

Where this site is hosted, and what it runs on

This site is hosted in the United Kingdom with Krystal Hosting Ltd, a UK company based in London, chosen partly for its environmental standing. Krystal publishes that its data centres run on 100% renewable energy without relying on offsets, that it has been a certified B Corporation since 2023, that its UK facility operates at a power usage effectiveness of 1.1, and that it is a member of 1% for the Planet and the UN Race to Zero. Its hosting is verified as green by the Green Web Foundation.

Those are Krystal's own published commitments rather than something we audit ourselves; we name them because a claim about green hosting should be checkable, and you can check it at krystal.io/green.

Children and people who use Talk

Talk is designed to be used by disabled people, including children, and often with the help of a family member, teacher or support worker. That is precisely why it collects nothing: a communication aid should not require its user to be registered anywhere in order to speak. The optional services above are off until somebody adds a key.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to and port your personal data. In Talk's case there is nothing held by us to which those rights could attach — everything is on your own device, and uninstalling the app removes it. If you believe we hold something about you, write to privacy@fiduciatogether.uk and we will tell you honestly. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes we will update this page and change the date below. Talk having no server is a property of the software rather than a promise about our conduct, and any change to it would be a change to the app itself, announced as such. Version 1.2.0 added the optional services above; each is off unless you add your own key.