Julia Cummins’ daughter could hear Irish spoken all around her—at home, in the playground, at her Gaelscoil—but couldn’t speak it back. She used a communication app, but it only worked in English. That changed when Cummins reached out to researchers at Trinity College Dublin and helped create Geabaire, an Irish-language tool that lets non-speaking autistic children communicate in their community’s language.
Geabaire—Irish for "chatterbox"—is a symbol-based app that turns taps on images into spoken Irish words and sentences using synthetic voices. Developed by linguists, educators, and tech experts at Trinity’s ABAIR research initiative, it’s the first full communication support system built from the ground up for the Irish language. Before this, families had to adapt English tools, but Irish grammar, word order, and dialects are too different for simple translation.
This September, 24 new autism classes opened in Irish-medium primary schools across Ireland. With them came free access to Geabaire for schools, families, and students. Professors Neasa Ní Chiaráin and Emily Barnes, who lead the project, call it a game changer. For the first time, autistic children who don’t speak can now learn, answer questions, and make friends in Irish—not just survive school, but belong in it.
The need was real. In Irish-speaking communities, where preserving the language depends on daily use at home and school, children with complex communication needs were being left behind. Some families were even advised to stop speaking Irish at home because no tools existed to support them. Geabaire flips that script. It ensures that language inclusion isn’t just for fluent speakers—it’s for everyone.
Beyond Ireland, the project sets a global example. As one of the first Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems made for a minority European language, it shows how technology can serve endangered and morphologically complex languages worldwide. Julia Cummins is now pursuing a Ph.D. to study how Geabaire’s design can help other communities build similar tools for their own languages.
"Ultimately, the success of a language is measured not only by the number of people who speak it, but by who is enabled to belong within it," says Ní Chiaráin. With Geabaire, more children can grow up hearing—and using—Irish every day, whether they speak with their voice or a device.