eSLA
A free communicator for people losing their voice.
Augmentative communication app for people with ALS and other conditions: the tablet camera becomes a precision pointer, everything works offline with no account, free forever. A non-profit project conceived and built by the studio.
- Role
- Concept, Accessible UX, Interface design, Development
- Site
- esla.it
Context
ALS takes the voice away before many other things: three people in four will, in time, need help to communicate. The tools exist, but a dedicated eye-tracking communicator costs between 5,000 and 15,000 euros, and even commercial apps charge a subscription. For a family already facing the disease, those are barriers placed in front of words.
Challenge
Build a tool a family can have today, on the tablet already sitting at home, spending nothing and depending on no one: no mandatory internet, no account, no server that can be switched off one day. And one that follows the person over time — because ALS changes, and the way you point must be able to change too.
Solution
One app that speaks for the person, on the device they already own. Seven selection modes, one for every stage: touch, head movements, head and eyes together, eyes only, hand and finger, a blink, an external switch. The front camera becomes a precision pointer: recognition runs entirely on the device and no image is ever stored or sent.
The panel keeps what matters in the same place — SOS is within reach on every screen — and quick replies keep the conversation alive: yes, no, thanks, wait. The keyboard knows Italian, suggests the next word from a 30,000-entry vocabulary and also speaks through ARASAAC pictograms. The voice can be the device's own, a more natural neural one, or the person's: the voice bank keeps recorded phrases while the voice is still there.
Design
Big buttons, high contrast, nothing to learn: it opens from an icon and takes the whole screen. Every interface choice answers the same question — does it work when the hand shakes, when the light is poor, when fatigue is high? Calibration walks the family through step by step, and the app adapts to the person, never the other way around.
Technology
A PWA: it installs in a minute from the browser, on iPhone, iPad and Android, no App Store. React and TanStack Start for the interface, MediaPipe for face, eye and hand recognition — locally, on the device — Web Speech for the voice with optional neural voices, IndexedDB to keep phrases and settings in the family. No backend: zero servers, zero accounts, zero data collected.
- React
- TanStack Start
- PWA
- MediaPipe
- Web Speech
- IndexedDB
- People with ALS who lose their voice
- 3 in 4
- Forever, against 5,000+ for a dedicated device
- € 0
- Pointing modes, one for every stage
- 7
- Words in the Italian vocabulary
- 30,000
Results
eSLA is free today and stays free: a non-profit project, given to those who need it, MIT-licensed code. It is not a medical device and does not claim to be one — it is a communication support tool, born in Sardinia, so that in every family words can keep travelling.
Board by board.
