Category: Apps

It’s that time of year again… Parents and children crowd the aisles of Target and Walmart pushing shopping carts loaded up with notebooks, binders, pencils, crayons, lunch boxes and backpacks. But not all the tools for a successful school year are on store shelves. Apps —found on your child’s laptop, smartphone or tablet— may be the most helpful back-to-school tools of all. Especially useful for children with special needs, new apps are cropping up daily. We did some homework and discovered some apps that come highly recommended by teachers, therapists, parents and students.

Conversation Builder Teen
This app helps teens with social skills challenges to learn reciprocal conversation skills. Conversation Builder uses a visual format to teach users how and when to introduce themselves, ask questions, and when it’s time to change the subject. Including 300 different conversations and over 4,000 audio clips, the app groups conversations into eight sections — school, sports, entertainment, bullying, sarcasm, relationships, summer and clothes, so that students can feel more comfortable conversing in a variety of social situations. Please note: Conversation Builder also comes in a version for elementary school-aged children.

Talking Calculator
With large colorful buttons, an option for contrast and full voice-over support, this app is ideal for students with low vision. According to the Edadvocate.com, “The app actually talks to students, telling them which button their finger is currently hovering over. When students are calculating something, the app can vocalize the answer.”

Articulation Station Pro
Developed by a speech language pathologist, this app uses attractive images and engaging drills to help students learn to articulate their words more clearly. Articulation Station Pro is meant to be used with help from a therapist, teacher or parent.

Touch and Learn Emotions
Learning how to read emotions is one of life’s most important skills. Touch and Learn Emotions uses beautiful photos and fun games to help children with social communication challenges to read social cues.

Thumbjam
This music app makes it possible for people with physical disabilities to make music. Including recordings of instruments such as electric and acoustic guitar and bass; strings, brass, keyboards and so many more, Thumbjam makes music lovers into musicians! Writes Cara Batema for Special Needs.com: “The app at its most basic is effortless — the sounds and music you can create with it are incredible and almost anyone can use it.”

Dragon Anywhere
Though it’s not new and it’s not specifically for deaf and hearing people, Dragon Anywhere is widely used by people in the deaf community. This app allows deaf and hearing people to communicate with each other by converting speech into text in real time, a lot like closed caption TV. Dragon can also be used to advantage by students who have challenges writing and taking notes. Use the app during meetings or classes and it will take notes for you!

Coughdrop
Designed for people who are nonverbal or difficult to understand because of disabilities such as cerebral palsy, autism or Down syndrome, this augmentative alternative communication app includes starter boards with large or small buttons that enable people on different levels to communicate using their smartphones, tablets or computers. Coughdrop also works well for visually impaired students since the app has a built in speak mode that allows users to hear the words they choose.

 

Apps are popping up all over! And that includes apps for people with disabilities. It seems in fact, that with every passing day, the selection of apps grows, making virtually every aspect of life more accessible for those with special needs. The downside? Sorting through all the apps to determine what’s best for you can be a Herculean task. In an attempt to make things easier, we’ve scoured the internet to find the most innovative and highly rated apps to recently hit the market. Here are our recommendations.

Trip Trip Hurray
Just in time for a last minute summer vacation, this popular travel app lets users make customized searches, schedule and book their vacations. Great for people with disabilities as well as parents of young children and those traveling with pets, Trip Trip Hurray’s easy interface allows users to simply type in whatever they need whether before or during their trip. For instance, “wheel-chair accessible restaurants.”

Pedius
This sophisticated app helps people who are deaf or hard of hearing communicate by mobile telephone without a third party intermediary. Users can make real-time calls by text messaging their contacts. Just type in your message and the app translates it into speech, making it possible for the person on the other end of the call to hear it. When the contact responds, their speech is translated back into text so the caller can read it. Pedius can be used with an artificial voice, or users can record their own voices.

Special Education Dictionary
Simple but awesome, this new app geared toward family members and teachers, provides definitions of thousands of special education terms for laypeople. Developed by The National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET) Special Education Dictionary makes advocating for your special needs student far less overwhelming.

Prism
This app is designed to help neurotypical children understand and build empathy for people with autism. Set in a colorful 3-D environment, animals teach children about many of the characteristics and behaviors that are common to people with autism. A great tool for teachers with inclusive classrooms.

Otismo
Developed by the brother of a boy with autism, this award-winning game-based educational app helps children with a variety of disabilities including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome, attention deficit disorder, cerebral palsy and aphasia learn reading and math skills. Best of all, Otismo can be customized to the student’s age and educational level so the app grows with your child.

Remember when there were no apps? When everything we wanted to know and do wasn’t literally at your fingertips? In today’s world, there’s an app for everything and new ones are being developed all the time. Apps have transformed life for everyone, but perhaps they have improved quality of life for people with disabilities the most. We’ve scoured the Internet to find the newest, most innovative and most useful apps for people with disabilities. Our findings are below. Happy apping!

1. Access Earth

Created by Matt McCann, an Irishman with cerebral palsy, Access Earth is an app and web platform that uses crowd sourcing to gather information from users on accessible hotels, restaurants, stores and attractions. McCann, a software engineer, decided to start his business after having one too many experiences with sites that called themselves “accessible” though they really were far from it. Though Access Earth is just getting off the ground, McCann hopes that in time, the app will become a “Trip Advisor” for people with disabilities.

2. Blappy

This new smartphone app helps people with visual and auditory disabilities to communicate by turning voice messages into text messages for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and vice versa for people who are blind or visually impaired. Blappy, which was invented by a team of computer scientists at the University Carlos III of Madrid, also enables users to include high contrast images in their texts and to zoom in on their messages.

3.Marlee Signs

Learn American sign language from Academy Award winning actress Marlee Matlin with the newest version of this popular app! While this app won’t take the place of a live ASL class, it’s a great introduction or supplement to a class.

4. Look at Me

This Android app, created for children with autism helps them to improve eye contact, read social cues, recognize faces and communicate with others. According to parents whose children underwent eight weeks of testing Look at Me, 60 percent of the children’s eye contact improved.

5. Jooay

Developed by a team of occupational therapists at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, this new app will improve mental and physical health of children with disabilities by helping their families to locate opportunities for leisure, recreational and creative arts activities that are accessible for children with particular disabilities.

“More than a location device, “Jooay” is intended to encourage social interaction among children with disabilities, and to enhance their quality of life,” according to the Montreal Gazette.

6. Kid in Storybook Maker

When gaming developer, Sooinn Lee, gave birth to a son with developmental disabilities, she and her husband, a computer scientist, decided to create apps to help him learn. Kids in Storybook Maker is one of these. The app enables users to create digital storybooks starring their own sons or daughters. “’Kid in Story’ came about because kids with autism can have a hard time adjusting to new situations, like getting a haircut, going to the movies, or visiting a friend’s house,” writes Daniella Hernandez, a writer for Fusion . Parents of autistic children often tell them a story that spells out what an experience will be like, so the kids have a play-by-play road map of what to expect.”

7. Listening Power Preschool HD

Speech pathologist, Patti Hamaguchi,developed this app to help children with their listening skills, and educators were duly impressed.  So impressed in fact, that the app won the 2016 Academics’ Choice Award for Smart Media!