About the Continuous Path Foundation
Mission
Our mission is to make effective AAC technology affordable worldwide.
For us, every word in that sentence carries weight:
- Effective — provide real communication, with innovative UIs that can speed up text entry.
- AAC — Augmentative and Alternative Communication: the field of tools that help people communicate who can't easily speak or type.
- Affordable — within reach of anyone who needs it, anywhere in the world.
- Worldwide — global availability, with a focus on regions that today have almost no access to AAC.
Why "Continuous Path"?
The name has two meanings, and both matter to us.
The technical one: Swype, the keyboard input method our founder co-invented, works by tracing a single continuous path across the keys instead of tapping letter by letter. That idea was born in an effort to build an on-screen keyboard that would work for individuals with challenges using an ordinary desktop keyboard. The success of that idea on mobile phones provided the resources that originally launched this foundation.
The deeper one: we believe everyone deserves a continuous path through life. Not a guaranteed destination, but a route they can travel to reach whatever their goals might be — work, family, education, independence, connection — without being stopped by barriers they didn't choose. Communication is one of the most fundamental of those barriers when it isn't there. Removing it is the work.
Why this work, and why now
Most AAC devices today are powerful, but they share two limitations: they cost several thousand dollars, and they function as locked-down appliances. Outside of well-resourced healthcare systems, that combination is a wall.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been quietly catching up: an entry-level Android tablet for under $100 now has the processing power, the cameras, and the connectivity to run a serious AAC system. The gap isn't hardware. The gap is software designed to bridge that hardware to the people who need it.
We exist to close that gap.
Our story
The Continuous Path Foundation was founded in 2011 by Cliff Kushler, a text-input researcher and engineer with a long history in the field.
Cliff's first involvement with AAC was in 1978 as a student in John Eulenberg's Artificial Language Lab. In the early 1990s he co-invented the original JustType, an 8-key text-input method designed for an early eye-gaze prototype. Later that decade JustType was commercialized as T9 predictive texting, which ultimately shipped on more than 8 billion phones. In the early 2000s he co-invented Swype, the continuous-path keyboard input method that shipped on roughly a billion phones and is now emulated on every major mobile platform.
When Swype was acquired in 2011, Cliff and the other CPF board members — Mike McSherry, Aaron Sheedy, Loreen Milbrath, and Mark Illing — founded CPF specifically to bring those text-input innovations back to where they started: people who need AAC. After years of incubation, active development resumed, leading to the release of HeadBoard in 2024 and a redesigned, open-source JustType in 2025.
How we work — five commitments
- World-wide. We focus on making AAC available globally, with a focus on regions that have been under-served, including the teaching and training resources to support it.
- Effective. We build on decades of hard-won expertise in efficient text-based input — T9, Swype, and JustType — and keep designing better tools for AAC.
- Affordable. Everything we make is free and open-source, runs on inexpensive Android devices, and gives the user access to the whole device, not a single locked AAC app.
- Practical. We design with literacy in mind, treating text-based input not only as communication but as a path toward reading and writing — including integration with symbol-based systems.
- Networked. We collaborate with individuals and organizations across the AAC field — clinicians, researchers, educators, developers, and other nonprofits — because no single group can solve this alone.
Recognition
Our current work was presented at ATIA 2026 (Assistive Technology Industry Association annual conference). View the poster on the Resources page.
Get in touch
We're a small organization with a big mission, and we'd genuinely like to hear from you. Whether you have a question, an idea, or want to get involved: