Adoption pack · AssisT 1.0.0
Everything you need to decide whether to recommend AssisT to your students, in one place. It is free, it is open source under the EUPL-1.2, there is no contract to sign and no account for anyone to create. What follows is the evidence, including the parts that are not finished.
Learning support officers, disability support officers, assistive technology officers, access and inclusion teams, and the IT and data protection colleagues they have to convince. In other words: the person who has to answer "is this safe, is it accessible, what does it cost, and who signs for it" before a tool can be recommended to a student.
AssisT is designed for students working inside a learning management system — Canvas, Moodle, Google Classroom — and on the web generally. It is used by neurodivergent students, dyslexic students, students with low vision, students with motor impairments, and students who simply read and write better with support. It does not require a diagnosis, a referral, or any record that a student is using it.
Thirty-nine supports in one extension, grouped as Reading, Writing, Seeing, Focus and Study, with twelve built-in profiles that configure them in one click. The popup can be searched by what a student wants to do, such as "read to me" or "too bright".
Text-to-speech with synchronised word highlighting, reading mode, dyslexia reading modes (bionic, syllable, grammar colour), dictionary lookup, translation of a selection into 37 languages (a whole page into 14), and OCR that pulls text out of images in 14 recognition languages.
Dictation with spoken editing commands, sticky notes and annotations, a citation manager covering four styles and ten source types, and Authorship Shield, which keeps a local record of how a piece of writing developed.
Page fonts including Lexend and OpenDyslexic, spacing controls and an interface that survives a student's own text-spacing overrides (SC 1.4.12), screen colour overlays, a reading guide, a magnifying lens, a custom cursor, and reduced motion.
Focus mode, autoplay blocking, a simplified-interface level, a Pomodoro timer, Maths Support, flashcards, a lecture companion, and a mind map (beta) whose outline is a fully keyboard-driven ARIA tree and which opens maps from other mind map tools.
AI is optional and off by default. Where a student wants it, it can run entirely on their own machine (Ollama), entirely in the browser (WebLLM), or through a cloud provider using the student's own API key. Full feature detail.
In Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google draws the document on a canvas, so tools that need the document's words cannot work inside those editors. Google Classroom pages are not affected. What this means for students.
Alt+R for reading mode, Alt+Shift+D for the
dictionary, Escape to get out. There are 18 page shortcuts and 12 more in the
mind map editor, and all of them are re-bindable.
chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode and open AssisT's service worker,
then watch its Network tab: it makes the dictionary, translation, citation, cloud AI and
Read from Images language requests. Browser AI model downloads from Hugging Face are made
by AssisT's offscreen page, also listed there. Speech recognition and online read-aloud
voices are sent by Chrome itself and will not appear in either. Use the
reading and writing tools: nothing goes out.
Then translate a selection: AssisT asks first, naming MyMemory and what it would send, and
only after you allow it do you see the single request. Open Advanced options → Your data
to see and change the answer. This is the fastest way to verify the privacy claims rather
than take our word for them.
52 WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA criterion rows (self-assessed), in VPAT 2.5 format, with EN 301 549 and Section 508 mapping. A self-assessment by the developer, not an independent audit — it says so on the page, and it lists the gaps.
What is stored, where, and what leaves the device, with the consent asked before anything is sent. Chrome permissions explained one by one. FERPA, COPPA and GDPR positions stated without overclaiming.
Force-install by extension ID through Chrome Enterprise, the one managed policy key that exists, and the settings we recommend for a disability service rollout.
Every third-party service AssisT can contact, what triggers it, exactly what is sent, a link to each provider’s terms, and how the student is asked before anything is sent. Fiavaion itself has no sub-processors.
EUPL-1.2: use, modify and redistribute under the same licence. No fee, no seat count, no renewal. The licence text itself is in the repository.
Also: LICENSE on GitHub
Channels, the 5-working-day acknowledgement for accessibility reports, how updates arrive, and an honest list of what is not promised.
Every release, what changed in it, and when. Useful if you need to show a committee that the tool is actively maintained.
Everything above is public and needs no request. Email us if you need something it does not cover — a written statement for procurement, an institution branding key for managed browsers, or a walkthrough for your team. The link opens a message with the subject and a short checklist already filled in.
Accessibility and institutional enquiries are acknowledged within 5 working days. See the support commitments for what that does and does not mean.
Nothing. There is no paid tier, no premium version, no per-seat licence, no institutional edition, and no renewal. Development is funded by voluntary contributions through Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee and GitHub Sponsors. Nothing in AssisT is held back behind a payment.
No. There is no account to create, no email address to hand over and nothing to sign in to. A student installs the extension and it works. That also means there is no roster to manage, no seats to reclaim, and no list of who is using it — including for us.
Not until the student says yes. On a fresh install nothing leaves the browser, and
nothing the student selects, types or says is sent without a yes. Settings
live in chrome.storage.local on the device, and notes, citations, mind maps,
flashcards and Authorship Shield history stay on the device too. Nothing syncs across
devices and nothing reaches Fiavaion — we run no server that could receive it.
AssisT asks the student before it sends anything to an outside service, one question per service, during the welcome setup or at first use: the dictionary, translation (with a separate question for translating a whole page), Crossref for citation details, checking a reference online, downloading a Read from Images language other than English from jsDelivr, dictation and lecture capture (which use Google's speech recognition in Chrome), and any cloud AI provider the student chooses with their own key. Where a service needs Chrome's permission, Chrome asks in the same press; on a course page the question opens in a small AssisT window. Nothing beyond the course sites and Hugging Face (for Browser AI models) is granted at install. Each question names the service and exactly what would be sent, and nothing is sent until the student allows it. Every answer can be changed later under Advanced options → Your data. The sub-processor list names every service and what it receives.
Fiavaion processes no personal data through AssisT, so we are neither controller nor processor and there is no data processing agreement to sign with us. If a student enables a cloud provider with their own key, that provider is that student's own sub-processor under the student's agreement with them. For FERPA: AssisT is designed with FERPA principles in mind — no student data is collected. We make no HIPAA claim.
AssisT is licensed under the EUPL-1.2, an EU-approved open source licence. You may use it, modify it, and redistribute it under the same licence, for any purpose, without asking us. The source is public. If the project stopped tomorrow your institution could fork and maintain it, and the copies already installed would keep working, because nothing depends on a server we operate.
Chrome and Edge, version 109 or later, on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. There is no Firefox build and no Safari build. If your students are issued iPads, AssisT is not the tool for them.
Through the Chrome Web Store, silently, on Chrome's own update schedule. There is nothing for IT to repackage or push and nothing for the student to do. If you force-install AssisT by policy, updates still arrive the same way — see the managed deployment guide. Every release is listed in the changelog.
Yes, by extension ID through Chrome Enterprise, Chrome Browser Cloud Management, Group Policy or the equivalent Edge policy. One managed policy key exists — an optional institution branding key that applies your name and colours. It grants no other capability and gives the institution no visibility of student activity. See the managed deployment guide.
No. The Accessibility Conformance Report is a self-assessment by the developer. An independent specialist audit is planned but not commissioned, and there is no date for it. Screen-reader conformance testing with NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver has not been done. We would rather you knew that now than found out during a pilot.
Page last updated 13 September 2026, for AssisT 1.0.0.