An illustration of a classroom with 4 students and a teacher. Two students are using iPads with Micalo and the teacher is holding an iPad with Micalo on the screen.

AssistiveWare Learning Service

AssistiveWare Learning Service is designed to help make instruction accessible for every student. It’s especially valuable for educators in special education and inclusive classrooms who differentiate instruction for a wide range of learning needs.

AssistiveWare Learning Service provides teachers with science of learning-informed tools to support academics, literacy, and language for a diverse range of learners.

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What is included in AssistiveWare Learning Service?

AssistiveWare Learning Service includes three apps that work together to support language, literacy, and learning.

Micalo helps educators and students explore ideas visually, making it easier to explain and understand concepts in any subject. Estello focuses on building early vocabulary with clear, structured lessons. Pictello helps educators and students easily read, create, and share multimedia stories to build digital literacy.

Together, Micalo, Estello, and Pictello create a unified teaching and learning system designed to support users across a range of different needs and environments.

Three apps designed for teaching and learning

Micalo

Micalo is an interactive teaching app that helps educators and students explore language and concepts from any subject area. It is easy to use and highly flexible, allowing classrooms to work with shared visuals dynamically.

It includes a preloaded set of graphics in an organized vocabulary that spans the curriculum. This gives teachers immediate access to visuals they can use during instruction.

Micalo supports working memory and executive functioning by connecting visuals with text and spoken language. Creating and displaying shared visuals reinforces memory and recall of key concepts and new terms.

A vertical iPad showing Thinking Space in Micalo with multiple symbols showing a physics lesson

What you can do with Micalo

A horizontal iPad showing Thinking Space in Micalo showing multiple symbols of a lesson explaning the lifecycle of a butterfly

Visualize and explain ideas clearly

Thinking Space™ in Micalo is the fastest way for educators to teach with visuals. Micalo’s visuals are consistent and carefully organized. They can be used to explain concepts, show comparisons, or organize information clearly on any digital display.

A horizontal iPad showing Smart Player in Micalo showing multiple letters showing a phonics lesson

Hear words and sentences

Smart Player allows educators and students to hear the words and sentences they create. They can put letters or words into Smart Player, and it will read them out loud. This supports phonics, sentence building, and early grammar lessons.

A horizontal iPad showing Writing Pad in Micalo being used in for a writing assignment

Make writing accessible

Educators and students can write using letter tiles, a keyboard, or add words from the vocabulary grid. They can work with visuals in Thinking Space and then generate text in Writing Pad. This helps teach phonics, spelling, grammar, and overall writing skills.

Estello

Estello supports explicit symbol and basic vocabulary instruction through clear, structured lessons. Each ready-to-teach lesson has been carefully designed to help reduce the time educators need to plan, while ensuring consistent, high-quality teaching through a well-planned instructional path.

What you can do with Estello

A horizontal iPad showing the teacher view of Estello of a lesson for the word and symbol want

Teach foundational vocabulary easily

Each daily lesson provides educators with a detailed script on their iPads and a simple view for students on the classroom display. The script guides educators to introduce symbols and vocabulary in isolation, then compare or contrast, and use them in context.

A horizontal iPad showing the teacher view of Estello of a lesson for word and symbol like showing modeling on AAC

Daily lesson flow

Each lesson uses symbols, modeled speech, and discussion prompts to help students associate symbols with words and ideas. This supports all learners, including early communicators and AAC users. Attention and engagement are supported with topic choices.

A horizontal iPad showing the teacher view of Estello of the All Lessons screen

Build student understanding

Lessons follow a structured sequence that gets more complex over time. Words are reviewed in later lessons and used in new contexts, helping students remember them. This distributed practice helps students build recognition and deepen their understanding.

Pictello

Pictello helps educators and students read, create, and share multimedia stories to build digital literacy. Its simple, intuitive design makes it easy for educators to scaffold learning while students create their own stories with confidence.

What you can do with Pictello

Pictello interface showing what content can be added

Build literacy through multimedia stories

Educators can help students develop vocabulary and comprehension through reading, creating, and sharing multimedia stories. They can also create classroom books and digital bookshelves that combine text, photo, video, recorded audio, and text-to-speech to support learning.

Engage students with meaningful stories

Educators and students can create personalized multimedia stories using students' own photo, video, text, and recorded audio. Educators can build on students' interests and experiences to increase engagement and participation. They can also adapt stories for different ages, abilities, and learning goals, and capture and celebrate personal milestones.

Support expression and oral language

Pictello’s simple digital storytelling interface allows students to easily create oral presentations, personal narratives, and communication books. Educators can then share and display student work as Pictello stories or PDFs.

Shared foundations across AssistiveWare Learning Service

Micalo, Estello, and Pictello complement each other by design. Because they share the same core building blocks, students can apply what they learn throughout lessons, subject areas, classrooms, and grade levels.

Visuals

Consistent visuals support learning and retention across lessons, units, and topics. With AssistiveWare Learning Service, all educators in a school can reinforce learning and recall across all classrooms and grade levels in a student’s school career.

Vocabulary

Carefully organized vocabulary ensures educators can quickly find, arrange, and display consistent visuals. This unifies visual supports across different subject areas, reducing cognitive load and enhancing retention.

Voice output

All three apps include voice output. Students benefit from voice output that is clearly articulated, specifically those who are learning English or struggle with phonological awareness.

Who AssistiveWare Learning Service supports

Educators and school teams

AssistiveWare Learning Service provides educators and school teams with more structure and confidence to meet the diverse learning and communication needs of students. Quick visuals make planning easier, saving prep time so teachers can focus on teaching and connecting with students. Ready-to-use lessons transform “core word of the week” and other early language instruction with an explicit, structured approach. Built-in tools for creating multimedia stories and classroom books help educators support learning while engaging students through personalized stories. It is especially helpful for special education and inclusive classrooms where teachers balance literacy, communication, and different learning needs.

School leaders and curriculum coordinators can count on it as a research-based tool to support staff and improve student outcomes.

Students

Students with significant support needs, especially those who are AAC users and early communicators, often require the most differentiation and personalized support. These students benefit the most from the accessibility fostered by the AssistiveWare Learning Service. Micalo maximizes their opportunities for learning and participation through consistent visual and voice output paired with innovative features such as Thinking Space, Smart Player, and Writing Pad. Estello’s high-intensity explicit instruction supports symbol recognition, message construction, and sentence building. Pictello's distraction-free interface helps students easily read, create, and share multimedia stories. These stories combine text, photo, video, recorded audio, and text-to-speech to build vocabulary, comprehension, digital literacy, and oral language. AssistiveWare Learning Service combines literacy, communication, and executive functioning support into a single system.

School-based specialists

AssistiveWare Learning Service simplifies planning and intervention for specialist providers in areas such as speech-language and behavior support. It provides a universal language-support tool that builds consistency and cohesion across different tiers of intervention, from whole-class to individual therapy. The consistent visuals, shared vocabulary, and unique instructional features are ideal for small-group and one-on-one instruction. Ready-to-use lessons build capacity by equipping school-based assistants to deliver high-fidelity intervention. Clinicians are freed to focus on progress monitoring towards individual student goals. Personalized multimedia stories allow specialist providers to adapt them for different learning goals and reinforce learning through review and repetition.

Families

AssistiveWare Learning Service supports families who want easy-to-use tools to help their children with communication and learning. Its features and design make it simple for parents to support their children, even if they have no teaching or speech therapy experience. Families can create personalized multimedia stories using their child's own photo, video, text, and recorded audio. They can capture and celebrate personal experiences and milestones while supporting learning.

How AssistiveWare Learning Service supports AAC users and emergent communicators

Micalo, Estello, and Pictello are built on AAC technology to support inclusive instruction for diverse learners. They reflect AssistiveWare’s mission to make AAC an effective and accepted means of communication.

Normalize AAC

When everyone uses the same visuals and vocabulary, AAC becomes a regular part of the school day. Students who use AAC feel more included when they see adults and students using similar technology.

Reduce barriers to understanding

Using the same visuals and vocabulary makes it easier for students to understand lessons. They can follow along and demonstrate what they know, whether they use symbols, speech, or other ways to communicate.

Build fluency through consistent shared vocabulary

Having the same visuals, vocabulary, and routines makes learning easier for AAC users and emergent communicators.

Designed to complement Proloquo

Proloquo is AssistiveWare’s latest AAC app designed to meet the communication needs of nonspeaking people. It uses the same Crescendo Evolution™ vocabulary, symbols, and many of the same features as AssistiveWare Learning Service.

Since Micalo, Estello, and Proloquo use the same vocabulary and symbols, AAC learning is reinforced with every classroom lesson. Educators model AAC use and navigation as a natural part of instruction, rather than an additional task. As educators use the Learning Service, they might identify students who would benefit from using AAC. School licenses come with complimentary three-month Proloquo trials, making it easy to try AAC without additional steps.

Illustration of a family sitting on a couch together. There is a mother and father and two children. The father is holding an iPad and the child is touching it

Free AssistiveWare AAC Professional license

If you work with AAC as a:

Speech and Language Pathologist or Therapist, or SLPA
Occupational Therapist
Assistive Technology Specialist
AAC coach
Board Certified Behavior Analyst

If you’re a student in any of these disciplines, you can use Micalo, Estello, and Pictello for free. Find out if you are eligible and apply today!

If you already have an AssistiveWare AAC Professional license, Micalo, Estello, and Pictello will automatically be added to your AssistiveWare account.

Apply for a Free License

A male professional holding an iPad and showing Thinking Space in Micalo

Find the plan that’s right for you

AssistiveWare Learning Service license

99.99

/yr

$99.99/yr

Educator seats

For officially recognized educational institutions
Access to Micalo, Estello, and Pictello
One seat includes app access across all devices used in the educator's classroom, at no extra cost
Free trial for the current school year

Start Free Trial

AssistiveWare Learning Service Monthly

9.99

/mo

2-month free trial.

For families and homeschoolers
Access to Micalo, Estello, and Pictello
2-month free trial

AssistiveWare Learning Service Yearly

99.99

/yr

2-month free trial.

For families and homeschoolers
Access to Micalo, Estello, and Pictello
2-month free trial