Privacy Policy

11. EI Signal Stories for Special Kids (Autism) — Children’s Data

The EI Signal Stories for Special Kids feature is designed for use by a parent or legal guardian on behalf of a child. Because this feature collects information about a minor, the following additional terms apply.

11.1 What we collect about your child

• Profile fields: first name (or nickname), age group (and gender, if you gave it before we stopped asking), and short phrases about how the child shows and settles feelings — for example their signal word and calm anchor.
• Your child’s signals: how your child shows “too much” (a word, an action or a card) and what helps them calm, including anything you write in your own words. Each update is kept as a dated version, so you can see how they have changed.
• Practice records: for each activity you practise, the signal you tapped at each step, whether your child gave their signal and what helped, your optional notes, and the optional “Anything different today?” choices (for example slept badly or visitors) with how strong each was, with the time of day and day of the week, and your optional answer to “Did they use their signal on their own today?”.
• Event diary (optional): things you note once for a few days — for example visitors staying, a new teacher, or a fever. Some choices, such as fever or illness and medication changed, are health information about your child: we store only that the choice was made, how strong it was and the dates — no diagnosis, no medicine names. They are used only in your child’s own report, never sent to any AI provider, and deleted with the profile.
• Your own activities (paid plan): the activity and scene names you write.
• Life skills and EI stories: for each Life skills lesson you practise, how much help was needed at each step; for each EI story watched, which signal was chosen, a yes or no, and the dates. If you adapt a Life skills lesson (paid plan), we keep your request (with first names masked) and the drafts, and the version you choose for as long as you use it. Requests and drafts you did not use are cleared once they are over 180 days old (see 11.6).
• Where you live, for local-look pictures (optional): the country, state and city you pick from our list, so pictures can look like your area. If you type a town that is not on the list, it is kept on the profile but never sent to any AI provider; the state is used instead. You can change the place up to 3 times in 30 days.
• Own pictures (“Make it theirs”, paid plan, optional): with your tick, the look you choose for your child’s figure (boy or girl, skin, hair) and their favourite things, and the pictures drawn from them. These pictures are private to your account. If you change the choices or remove the tick, the pictures drawn from them are deleted at once. If paid access ends, they are put away for 30 days — not shown, but kept so they can come back if paid access starts again in time. We email you once, about a week before the end; after 30 days they are deleted. A device that saved them for use offline keeps that copy until you sign out on it, and shows it offline only within 7 days of last being online and signed in (12 hours on a school device).
• “Shared by parents” (optional): if you choose to share what worked for an activity with other families, we share a card built only from counts and our preset words — no names, notes, dates, diary, typed words or signal words. We check it before it is shown, and you can withdraw it at any time.
• Your own photos and voice recordings (optional): photos you take of real places (for example your car, a temple or your kitchen) and short recordings of you saying a scene (up to 15 seconds), each for one child. Nothing is kept until you agree, for that child, to the consent shown in the app; the date and the wording you agreed to are recorded, and you can withdraw at any time — then they stop being used in your child’s practice, and you can remove them or agree again. Photos are re-saved on our server so the phone’s location and other metadata are removed. They are stored privately, seen only in your account, used only to make your child’s practice personal and in overall, anonymous counts (for example, how many scenes use a family photo) to improve the app. They are never sold, never used for marketing, never shared with other families or a school, and never sent to any AI provider. You can remove each one at any time, and all are deleted with the profile.
• Food & sleep and Health & routine (optional): the usual meals and changes you note, tummy and toilet taps, last night’s sleep hours, energy, and whether a regular medicine changed — plus, in the profile, foods to avoid, usual bedtime and wake time, the usual toilet pattern and whether there is a regular medicine (never its name). This is health information about your child. It is used only in your child’s own report (“came together”, never “caused”, never diet advice), never sent to any AI provider, and deleted with the profile.
• Practice language: the language you choose for your child’s practice (English, Tamil or Hindi).
• Optional parent notes: a free-text field where you may add context.
• Earlier story features: if you used them before, your stories, reading history, readiness checks and journal entries remain in your account. The earlier upload of photos for “comic” pictures is no longer offered; photos uploaded for it were stripped of EXIF metadata (GPS, camera details, timestamps) and are deleted with the profile.

11.2 Parental consent

When you create a child profile, you confirm that you are the parent or legal guardian of that child and that you have authority to provide their information to the service. Consent is recorded with a timestamp. You can withdraw consent at any time by deleting the profile (see 11.5).

11.3 How your child’s data is used

• To run practice activities for your child and keep their practice records.
• To show you what works over time in the report (for example, which step is hard, what helped, and whether things like sleep or visitors make a difference). A pattern is only shown once there is enough practice to support it.
• A link with your child’s school (only if you both agree): the school gives you a one-time code; you see who is asking and tick what to share. The school’s practice with your child is then shared with you, and your practice at home with the school; events, food and sleep, and your typed notes only if you tick them. Photos and voice recordings are never shared. You or the school can end the link at any time, and each start, change and end is recorded and emailed to both of you.
• Only when you choose to share it: you can make a read-only link to one child’s dashboard and report for a therapist or another professional. It opens only with a 6-digit code you send separately, ends after 7, 30 or 90 days, and you can switch it off at any time. Your typed notes are left out unless you tick to include them; photos and voice recordings are never shared this way. Each time the link is opened we record the date, the time and the kind of device (phone, tablet or computer) — no IP address or location — so you can see when it was viewed. The person you share it with is responsible for keeping it private.
• To improve the underlying story-generation model — only in aggregate, never in a form that identifies your child.
• We do not use children’s data for advertising, profiling for targeted advertising, or any form of behavioural advertising.

11.4 Third-party AI processing

See Section 7 for the full list. For Special Kids today:

• Your own activities: the activity name and scene names go to Anthropic Claude for a safety check and for scene-name suggestions (with your child’s age group, if set, so the suggestions suit them), and to Google Gemini to draw the pictures. A child’s name is never allowed in those names.
• Pictures: Gemini receives the picture description only. For paid local-look pictures it also receives the name of the place you picked from our list (country, state or city, for example “Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India”) — never a town you typed, an address, a school name or your child’s name. The pictures show no faces and no names. A picture is drawn once and reused: if another family or a school uses exactly the same activity, scene names and place, they see the same pictures.
• Own pictures and EI stories in your child’s look (paid, with your tick): Gemini receives the look you chose (boy or girl, skin, hair) and one favourite thing — never a name, a face or a photo. If you show your child’s name in an EI story, it is put in on your device only and never sent to any AI provider.
• Life skills: when you ask to adapt a lesson (paid plan), your request goes to Anthropic Claude with your children’s first names masked first, together with our lesson. Claude writes a draft; it is checked by our own rules and shown to you, and nothing is used until an adult approves it. Pictures for new steps (paid) send the step’s words to Gemini.
• Never sent to any AI provider: your child’s profile (apart from the age group, for suggestions), signals, practice records, event diary, food and sleep, notes, report and dashboard; your own photos (stored privately); and your own voice recordings (stored privately).
• Both providers are based in the United States. The earlier story features sent profile fields to Claude and, only in “comic” mode, photos to Gemini; they are no longer offered and are switched off.

11.5 Your rights as parent / guardian

• Access: view all data attached to a profile in your account dashboard.
• Correction: edit any profile field at any time.
• Erasure: deleting a child profile removes the profile, their signals and all their versions, all practice records, their own photos, voice recordings and own pictures, all stories generated for that child and all journal entries linked to that profile, within minutes. A minimal record of the deletion (the time, the counts and your account, no child data) is kept for compliance audit. There is no button in the app for this yet: to delete a child profile, or your whole account, write to us at the address below.
• Portability: contact us at the address below to request an export of your child’s data.
• Grievance: for any complaint about how we handle your child’s data, write to the same address. We will respond within 30 days.

11.6 Retention

We keep your child’s profile, records, photos and voice recordings until you delete them, delete the profile, or ask us to delete your account. Some things are deleted on a timer:

• Own pictures: put away for 30 days when paid access ends, then deleted (see 11.1). Removing your tick deletes them at once.
• Life skills requests and drafts you did not use: cleared once they are over 180 days old. Today this runs when you next adapt a lesson; deleting the profile removes them at once.
• Therapist links: deleted about 12 months after they end or are switched off, with the record of when they were opened (cleared at the next clean-up).

We do not delete an inactive account on a timer today. If we ever do, we will email you first. Deleted data is removed from our primary database within minutes; encrypted database backups keep it for a limited period, set by our database provider, before it is overwritten.

11.7 Age restrictions

A child cannot use this service directly. Only a parent or legal guardian may create an account and a child profile. We do not knowingly let a child create an account in their own name.

12. School Edition — Students’ Data

In the School Edition, the school decides what is recorded about its students and why; we hold and process it for the school, on its instructions. A parent or carer with a question about a student’s data should ask the school first; we will help the school answer.

• What the school records: staff names, email addresses and roles; each student’s first name, the school’s own reference and year group (never a date of birth); the student’s signal word, calm anchor and profile; practice sessions, signals, events, plans, reports and staff comments; and the school’s reference for its consent paperwork (never the document itself).
• School photos: photos of places (the hall, the bus bay). Staff tick “No children in this photo” before every upload; the photo is re-saved so a phone’s location is removed; it is stored privately and never sent to any AI provider.
• AI: the same rules as Section 11.4. Activity and scene names go to the AI providers, and the place picked from our list goes only to the AI that draws pictures (Google Gemini); when staff adapt a Life skills lesson, their request goes to Anthropic Claude with the first names of the school’s students masked, and an adult approves the draft. A student’s own pictures are drawn only if the school has this switched on and staff have recorded the parent’s or carer’s OK; Gemini then receives the look (boy or girl, skin, hair) and one liked thing picked from the profile — never a name, a face or a photo. Withdrawing the OK, or the student leaving the roll, deletes those pictures at once. If the school’s trial ends, they are put away for 30 days, then deleted.
• Audit: staff actions on students’ data (for example adding or changing a student, viewing a report, or an export) are written to the school’s own activity log; the app gives no way to change it. It is kept for at least 3 years.
• Export and deletion: the school can export its data at any time. The school sets how long records are kept; automatic removal at the end of that period is not switched on yet, so until it is, we delete a school’s records when the school asks us to.
• Trials: see Section 2A.