Privacy policy

1. Who is responsible

Kotoba is developed and run by the WizIT Association, Chemin des Fourcles 13, 1985 La Forclaz VS, Switzerland.

For any question about this policy or about your data: info@wizit.org.

2. What Kotoba does

Kotoba turns a photo, a letter, a video, a recording or a question into an Easy Read document (called FALC in French), for a person with an intellectual disability. It is described on its page.

What people give Kotoba can say something about a person's health (a medical letter, a session with a therapist). That is why the documents live in the person's Google Drive, and not with us.

3. The Google account

Kotoba signs in with the person's Google account. When signing in, Google asks you to allow:

• your name, your email address and your profile picture: to show which account is signed in, to check that this account has access to Kotoba (section 6), and to never mix the documents of two people on the same device;
• "only the specific Google Drive files you use with this app": Kotoba stores its documents there. It only sees the files it created itself. The rest of your Drive is invisible to it.

Kotoba never sees your Google password. The token that keeps you signed in is kept encrypted on the device.

4. In your Google Drive

In your Google Drive, Kotoba creates a folder named Kotoba. It contains:

• each Easy Read document, with what was used to write it: the photo, the video, the recording or the text (the "source"), and the reading report of that source;
• the reading marks ("I don't understand") and the list of words that caused trouble;
• the settings, the person's first name and how to address them (informal "tu" or formal "vous").

The source is kept, so that someone close can check a document later. Throwing a document away in Kotoba sends it to the trash of your Drive.

A working copy is kept on the device, in the browser's storage, so that Kotoba opens without the Internet. The app also keeps a technical log of the last 200 events, with no document text. It only leaves the device if someone exports it themself, in the settings.

5. What is sent to Google to write the text

This is the most important point on this page. The Easy Read text is written by a Google artificial intelligence model (Gemini, on Google Cloud Vertex AI). To write a document, the photo, the video, the recording or the text is sent to Google, directly from the device. To simplify a sentence or redo a document, the reading report and the document are sent.

• These requests go through a paid Google Cloud project of WizIT. Under these terms, Google commits not to use this content to train its models.
• The place of processing is not guaranteed to be in Europe or Switzerland: the model used only exists on Google's global endpoint. Transfers outside Europe rely on Google Cloud's standard contractual clauses.
• A source larger than 15 megabytes (a video, in practice) is first placed in a WizIT Google Cloud storage space, in Belgium, while the model reads it. Nobody looks at it. A rule deletes it automatically after one day.
• The picture chosen to illustrate a sentence is never sent to the model.

6. What our servers see

Our servers run on Google Cloud (Cloud Run, region europe-west1, Belgium). No document goes through them. They do four things:

• Sign-in. Google's tokens go through them during the exchange: they are neither kept nor logged.
• Access. Kotoba is reserved for the people WizIT has opened it to. Our servers compare the email address of the signed-in account, proved by Google, with a list kept by WizIT in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. A line of this list contains: the institution if there is one, the first name, the Google account address, an end date, the name and email address of a caregiver, how to address the person, and the number of documents allowed.
• The counter. The number of documents made per day and per month. It is stored under a hash (SHA-256) of the email address, never under the address itself, with no name, no title and no content.
• The alert to the caregiver. When the app cannot work, an email is sent to the caregiver's address. Its text is chosen from a list of sentences written in advance: it cannot contain any document. The address is not logged.

The device's IP address is used, in memory, to limit the number of calls. The Google Cloud Run platform keeps its own infrastructure logs (IP address, browser, address requested) for 30 days.

7. Third-party services

The voice is the device's voice: Kotoba hands it the word to say, and does not send it over the Internet itself.

"Envoyer" (send) makes a PDF of the document on the device, then opens the device's share menu. The PDF goes where you choose, without going through WizIT.

8. Data from Google APIs

Kotoba uses the data it receives from Google APIs — the account's name, email address and picture, and the files of its Drive folder — only to make the features described on this page work. This data is not sold, not used for advertising, and not used to train generalised artificial intelligence models. Nobody at WizIT reads it, except at your request, for security, or when the law requires it.

Kotoba's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

9. People who are filmed

A video or a recording can contain someone else: a professional, a relative. Kotoba can ask for a confirmation before each recording, but this option is turned off by default. It is up to the person filming to tell the people they film.

10. No advertising, no audience measurement

Kotoba contains no advertising, no audience measurement and no cookies.

11. How long

• In your Drive: until you delete the Kotoba folder or a document.
• On the device: until you erase the app's data.
• A video larger than 15 megabytes, in our storage space: one day.
• The line in the access list: as long as access is open. It is deleted when access ends, or at your request.
• The counter: it only contains a hash and numbers; it is deleted at your request.
• Our servers' infrastructure logs: 30 days.

12. Your rights, and how to erase everything

Under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and the GDPR, you can ask what data we hold, and have it corrected or deleted: write to info@wizit.org. Most of the data is with you, and you can erase it yourself:

• erase everything: in Kotoba, the settings, "Avancé" (advanced) tab, "Réinitialiser l'application" (reset the app). The Kotoba folder goes to the trash of your Drive and the device is emptied;
• remove Kotoba's access to your Google account: myaccount.google.com/permissions;
• delete the documents from your Drive: delete the Kotoba folder.

13. If this policy changes

The date at the top of this page says when it last changed. A new feature that would send other data would only be added with an update of this page.