▶ scanning modes

• Auto scan — pictures highlight one by one. Press spacebar, Enter, or tap the highlighted card to select it.
• Picture scan — tap any card to see its picture clearly, then tap again to play its sound.
• Sound scan — each card plays its sound as it highlights. Press the switch to select.
• Row scan — whole rows highlight one at a time. Press the switch to pick a row, then it auto-scans the cards within that row. Press again to select a card. Good for large sets.

Each scan mode remembers its own speed setting independently.

When a card is selected during scanning, the sound plays in full before scanning resumes automatically.

🅰 speed slider

Drag the speed slider to make scanning faster or slower. Range is 0.3 seconds to 8 seconds per card.

⛄ shuffle

The snowman button shuffles the card positions randomly — great for "find Mum" activities.

★ favourites

Long-press any card to add it to favourites. A gold star appears in the top-left corner of favourited cards. A ★ Favourites set appears automatically in the set bar and updates as you add or remove stars. Long-press again to remove a card from favourites.

✥ select pic

Tap the select pic button to turn on spotlight mode. While active, tapping any card fills the whole screen with just that picture and its label, and plays its sound. The picture stays up for the current speed setting, then returns to the grid automatically. Tap select pic again to turn the mode off.

✎ editing cards

• Tap edit then choose a set to add, remove or change cards.
• Tap any card to change its photo (camera or photo library) and record or upload a sound.
• You can have as many cards per set as you like.
• In settings (top of the edit screen) choose 1, 2, or 3 cards across. 1-up fills the whole screen with one giant card — great for very low vision. 2-up gives big easy-to-tap cards. 3-up is the original layout.

⛶ full screen

Hides all controls so only the cards show. To exit, hold your finger (or mouse) in the top-right corner for 2 seconds. The corner glows red and a progress bar appears while you hold — release early to cancel.

🔒 passcode lock

Set a 4-digit PIN in settings to prevent accidental access to edit mode during a session.

👤 carer login

New in V3: carers can add their own photo and voice without needing your edit passcode.

• First, a parent/admin sets a carer password in edit settings (a shared text password, separate from the edit PIN).
• Carers tap the 👤 carer button on the main screen and enter that password.
• This opens a normal set editor scoped to a Carers set — carers add a card for themselves with a photo and can record their voice, exactly like any other card.
• Once the carer password has been used, the Carers set also appears in the set bar so Matthew and carers alike can see and scan it, same as any other set.
• That visibility only lasts for the current page load — reloading the page, or opening the app fresh on another device, hides the Carers set again until someone enters the carer password.
• Carer login only opens the Carers set — it doesn't give access to any other set or to the rest of edit mode.
• Remove or change the carer password any time from edit settings.

🔈 automatic speech

Every card without a recorded sound will speak its label aloud using the device's built-in voice — so "Dog", "Whale", "Yes", "Biscuit" and so on all say their name clearly with no recording needed. A local English voice is used where available, which means it works fully offline on iPad. If speech synthesis isn't supported, the app falls back to a musical tone instead..
If you want a card which has a recorded sound to NOT say the name of the card before the sound Please use Version 1 HERE

A few things to know on iOS:

• The first tap after loading may be silent — iOS requires a user gesture to unlock audio. Tapping the start scanning button first fixes this.
• You can change the voice accent in Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices. The app uses whichever voice is set there.
• Cards that have a recorded audio file (like Val, Jack and Matthew in the Family set) always play their real recording — speech only kicks in when there is no recording.

📱 switch access

Most Bluetooth switches register as spacebar or Enter — this app responds to both. Works with iOS Switch Control and Android Switch Access.

🌐 hosting your own copy

Want to run this on your own website instead of ours, and access edit and settings? It's just one file with nothing to install.

• Save this page as an .html file and upload it anywhere on your own web space — any folder, any filename.
• Open that address in a browser and it's running. No database, no build step, no server-side code.
• Use HTTPS, not plain HTTP — carer login needs camera/microphone access, which browsers only allow on secure pages.
• Everything you add — pictures, sounds, PIN, carer password — is stored in your own browser against your own address. Nothing carries over from our copy, and nothing you do is shared back to us.