Bilingual Articulation and Phonology AssessmentSpanish and English speech sounds, scored on bilingual norms.

BAPA Plus is a free download. Every iPad starts with 3 free assessments. After that, choose one of three in-app purchases, sold by Apple through the App Store:

• Unlimited testing, monthly: $9.99 a month, renews automatically.
• Unlimited testing, yearly: $89.99 a year, renews automatically. This is the cost of one SLP's unlimited testing for a school year.
• Five tests: $9.99 for 5 assessments. No subscription, and the tests never expire.

Prices are the U.S. App Store prices on October 21, 2026; Apple shows your local price before you buy. One assessment is one tap on Start Assessment, and a two-language (Spanish and English) assessment counts as one.

Subscriptions are managed by Apple, not by Smarty Ears. On your iPad, open Settings > your name > Subscriptions, tap BAPA Plus and tap Cancel Subscription (Apple's steps). As the purchase screen in the app explains, a subscription renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Refund requests also go to Apple, at reportaproblem.apple.com.

There is no Smarty Ears account or login in BAPA Plus. Your subscription belongs to the Apple Account that bought it. To use it on another iPad, sign in to the App Store with that same Apple Account, open BAPA Plus and tap Info > Purchasing Center > Restore Purchase. Apple allows up to 10 devices per Apple Account for purchases (Apple).

Two things stay on the iPad where they started: the 3 free assessments and any 5-test packs. A 5-test pack is a one-time (consumable) purchase, so Restore Purchase cannot move it to another iPad.

All BAPA Plus purchases go through Apple, inside the app. Smarty Ears does not sell BAPA Plus directly, so there are no invoices, purchase orders, offer codes or team licenses.

• Each SLP needs their own subscription, bought in the app with the Apple Account signed in on their iPad. Apple allows up to 10 devices per Apple Account for purchases.
• Apple School Manager and your MDM can install the app on every iPad, but they cannot buy or assign BAPA Plus subscriptions. Managed Apple Accounts cannot make purchases.
• Your MDM restrictions must allow in-app purchases and App Store sign-in on the iPad, or Buy and Restore Purchase will not work.
• Districts usually reimburse the SLP, or use a district-managed Apple Account with a district payment method.

Need to request funding? Our funding letter builder can help.

Select a student and tap New Assessment. Without a subscription, the top-right corner shows how many tests are left (for example, 3 Tests Left), and when none are left the button reads Buy Test. With an active subscription, a star badge replaces the count and the button always reads Start Assessment. If you subscribed and still see a count, make sure the iPad is signed in to the App Store with the Apple Account that subscribed, then tap Info > Purchasing Center > Restore Purchase.

They stay. Students, completed assessments, results and reports remain in the app, and you can still open, print and share them. Only starting a new assessment needs a subscription or tests left.

Student data is kept in the app on your iPad. BAPA Plus has no Smarty Ears account or cloud sync, so keep copies of the reports you need by e-mailing, printing or saving them as PDF.

The BAPA manual reports nine to twenty minutes for the full assessment, depending on the child's attention, how often the recorded word models are used, the examiner's familiarity with BAPA and whether you record the session.

Standard scores and percentiles are available for ages 3;0 to 10;11, the ages of the normative sample. For a child outside that range, the app shows Out of Age Range for the standard score, and all the qualitative analysis (by sound, position, manner, voicing, word and error type) is still available.

Either language, or both. When you add a student, choose the language they are exposed to or speak: Spanish, English or Both. For a bilingual child you pick which language to test first. After the first 8 words, BAPA Plus asks whether the child is doing well enough to continue in that language; if not, it moves to the other language, and the report notes that testing in that language was stopped.

You can also note dialectal influences (for example Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Spain or Argentina). They are not scored. For some dialects the report adds the dialect features to consider before calling a production an error.

Researchers at Texas State University have reported giving BAPA by telepractice: monthly to a child in an international telepractice program (Garza & Resendiz, TSHA), and to three clients in El Salvador and Guatemala in an honors thesis (Garza, 2020). The BAPA manual does not report norms for remote administration, so weigh standard scores from a remote session with your clinical judgment.

Any iPad with iPadOS 15.6 or later. BAPA Plus is an iPad app; it is not available for iPhone or Android.

Yes. As reported in the BAPA manual, BAPA was standardized on 438 children ages 3;0 to 10;11 in Central Texas, with three sets of norms: English Only, Bilingual English, and Spanish (monolingual and bilingual children together).

The raw score is the number of target sounds produced correctly. BAPA Plus converts it, for the child's age, into a standard score (mean 100, standard deviation 15), a percentile and a 90% or 95% confidence interval (you choose which in Settings). Spanish is scored on the Spanish norms. English is scored on the Bilingual English norms when the child is assessed in both languages, and on the English Only norms when only English is given.

All the children lived in Central Texas. Mexican Spanish was the dialect reported for 95% of the Spanish speakers, and 90% of the children in the bilingual and Spanish groups attended dual-language programs, learning to read and write in both languages. Children were assigned to language groups from parent reports of language use at home, daily exposure and the child's proficiency in each language, and from whether the child could name the first test items.

If the child you are assessing is from a different background, for example a Caribbean or Central American dialect, a newcomer with little English, or a child not in a dual-language program, the norms describe them less closely. Use the standard score together with the dialect notes, the error patterns, a speech sample and other evidence, as best practice recommends for any single test score.

Yes, as a measure in university work, including a poster at the 2019 ASHA Convention on giving BAPA by telepractice to a child with autism (Garza, Resendiz, Gonzales & Rojas, described in this TSHA article) and a 2020 Texas State University honors thesis on using BAPA during telepractice (Garza, 2020). These studies used BAPA; they are not studies of its norms.

No. BAPA Plus is only available as an iPad app from the App Store. A Smarty Ears Online subscription does not include BAPA Plus, and a BAPA Plus subscription does not include Smarty Ears Online. They are separate products with separate subscriptions.

E-mail [email protected]. In the app, Info also opens the manual, a video tutorial and a Contact Us e-mail.