Privacy Policy

AssistBernice is an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tool designed for people with expressive aphasia, their families, and caregivers. We built it with one guiding principle: your communication data belongs to you and stays on your device.

This policy explains what information AssistBernice collects, where it goes, and your rights over it. We have worked to keep this plain and readable — you should not need a lawyer to understand how we treat your data.

What data AssistBernice stores

AssistBernice stores all of its data locally in your browser using localStorage. This data never leaves your device. Stored data includes:

• Communicator profiles: name, relationship, caregiver name, and caregiver notes
• Custom phrase tiles: labels, spoken text, categories, and photos you upload
• Communication metrics: phrase counts, usage totals, session counts
• Recent and most-used phrases
• Messages and check-ins you compose and save
• Settings: text size, tile size, speech rate, high contrast, language preference, and morning reminder time

We do not have access to any of this data. It is stored on your device only. If you clear your browser storage or use a different device, this data will not be available.

When data leaves your device

It doesn't. AssistBernice sends no communication data to our servers or to third-party services. Messages, check-ins, profiles, and phrases exist only in your browser's local storage. The only caveat is your browser's own speech synthesis, described below.

Voice and speech

AssistBernice uses the Web Speech API, which is built into your browser. Text-to-speech synthesis runs locally on your device using system voices. Some browsers may send speech requests to their vendor's cloud servers (for example, Google Chrome may use Google's servers for certain voices). AssistBernice has no control over your browser's speech processing.

If speech privacy is a concern, use a browser with fully on-device voices, or check your browser's voice synthesis settings.

What we do not collect

• We do not use cookies
• We do not use analytics or tracking tools
• We do not create user accounts
• We do not collect IP addresses for profiling
• We do not share data with advertisers
• We do not use your data to train AI models

Children

AssistBernice does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Because all data is stored locally on the user's device and no accounts are created, AssistBernice does not receive this information in any case.

Your rights and data deletion

Because all your data is stored locally on your device, you have full control at all times:

• Access: All data is visible within the app.
• Deletion: Use the "Reset workspace" button in Settings to permanently delete all locally stored data. Clearing your browser's localStorage for this site achieves the same result.
• Portability: Profile export and import is planned for a future release.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product evolves. Material changes will be noted with a new effective date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review it periodically.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Reach us at [email protected].