Privacy
Words at Home is a tool for practising words at home, used by a person with aphasia and the family members who help them. This page explains what it stores, who can see it, and how to have it removed.
What this is, and what it is not
Words at Home is a practice tool. It is not therapy, not a medical device, and not a substitute for a speech-language pathologist. It does not diagnose, treat, or slow any condition, and nothing it shows should be read as clinical advice. Decisions about care belong with you and your clinician.
What we store
- The email address used to sign in, and the display name you choose.
- Photos you upload and voice recordings you make, including recordings of the person practising.
- Words, categories, and any notes or sentences you write.
- Practice history: which words were attempted, what help was needed, and when.
- If speech checking is switched on, a short audio clip of each attempt, stored with that session.
- Ordinary technical records needed to run the service, such as request logs.
Consumer health data
Some of what the app stores relates to a health condition: recordings of a person's speech, and how they performed on particular words. Where the law treats this as consumer health data, including the Washington My Health My Data Act, the following applies specifically to it.
- We collect it only to provide practice sessions and to show progress to the household.
- We do not sell it. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else for their own purposes.
- It is shared outside your household only with the speech service described below, which processes it to return a score and does not keep it.
- You can ask us to delete it, and deletion is carried out within 45 days. In practice, deleting the household removes it immediately.
- Consent for this collection is asked for separately, is not bundled into any other agreement, and can be withdrawn by switching speech checking off or deleting the household.
Speech checking and third parties
When speech checking is on, the audio of an attempt is sent to Microsoft Azure AI Speech, running under our own subscription, which returns a score for how closely the word was said. Microsoft states that this real-time service does not retain the audio. A copy of the clip is kept in our own private storage and attached to the session so a family member can listen back. Turning speech checking off stops both.
If your browser offers its own speech recognition and the app uses it as a fallback, that audio goes to your browser's vendor under their privacy policy, not ours.
Sign-in uses Google or Microsoft if you choose those buttons, which tells us your email address and name, nothing more. Email sign-in sends a one-time link through Microsoft Azure Communication Services.
Who can see your household
Each household is separate. Every request is scoped to the household it belongs to, and people can only see a household they were invited into. Roles control what each person can do. A paired tablet can practise and view that household's words, and nothing else.
Cookies
We use a small number of cookies that make sign-in work: one for your signed-in session, one for a paired tablet, and one remembering which household you are acting in. They are HttpOnly and marked Secure. There are no advertising or tracking cookies.
Keeping and deleting
Your content stays until you remove it. Deleting a word removes its photo and recordings. An administrator can delete the entire household from Settings, which erases every record and every file belonging to it.
Two practical caveats, stated plainly. Backups of the database exist for a short window for disaster recovery, and deleted files may remain recoverable in storage for a limited period before they are purged. Neither is accessible through the app, and both expire without action. Sign-in links expire in 15 minutes, and browser sessions after 180 days.
Where it is stored
Data is held in Microsoft Azure data centres in the United States.
Your choices
- Export your practice history from the dashboard at any time.
- Delete individual words, recordings, or the whole household.
- Turn speech checking off, which stops audio leaving the device for scoring.
- Ask us for a copy of what is held about you, or ask us to delete it, by writing to the address below.
Consent, and people who cannot easily give it
The person practising may have difficulty with language. That does not make their agreement unimportant. Before recording anyone, ask them in a way they can follow, and stop if they decline. The app records only when someone presses record; it never listens in the background. The household member who sets up an account confirms they have the authority to do so. Some places require everyone's consent before a voice is recorded, so ask before recording anybody.
Security
Sign-in secrets are stored hashed, traffic is encrypted, storage is private, and access is checked on every request. No system is perfect; if something goes wrong that affects you, we will tell you.
Children
Accounts are for adults aged 18 or over. A household may of course contain photos of children the family has taken.
Changes
If this page changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
Write to nick@njpconsultingllc.com with any question about your data, including a request to see it or delete it.