The Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT) is an open-source platform created at Intel Labs. It is designed to enhance communication for individuals with restricted speech and typing capabilities. It achieves this by providing functionalities like keyboard simulation, word/sentence prediction, and speech synthesis.
ACAT was originally developed by researchers in Intel Labs for Professor Stephen Hawking. He was instrumental to the design process and was a key contributor to the project design and validation. After deploying the system to Professor Hawking, Intel turned its attention to the larger community and continued to make ACAT more configurable to support a larger set of users.
By making this configurable platform open source, the goal is to encourage developers to continue to expanding its capabilities by adding new user interfaces, new sensing modalities, language prediction, and other features.
ACAT is developed in C# using Microsoft Visual Studio* 2022 and .NET 4.8.1. It runs on Windows® 10 (20H2 or higher) and 11.
What's new in 3.13
What's Changed - Security Fix Only
Remove version upgrade logic and related file from ACAT applications
Yes. Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit is free and open-source software released under the Apache-2.0 license.
What is the latest version of Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit?
The latest version is 3.13, released on May 8, 2025.
Is it safe to download Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit?
The download button links to the official installer published on github.com, the same file Windows Package Manager installs. You can verify the downloaded file by comparing its SHA-256 checksum with 8fbf7cf2e102a9ccccb545b8cb3f3dfc0eda5b7dac00807be4cfb6f1bc4794d3.
Which Windows versions does Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit support?
Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit runs on Windows and is available for 32-bit (x86) systems.
How do I install Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit silently?
Run the offline installer with "ACATSetup-3.13.exe" /S, or install it with Windows Package Manager: winget install --id=Intel.ACAT -e --silent.
How do I uninstall Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit?
Open Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit and select Uninstall. From the command line, run winget uninstall --id=Intel.ACAT -e.
Alternatives to Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit
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