Amazing iPad apps to help with autism and awareness

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

iPad Air 2
iPad Air 2 (Image credit: iMore)

The United Nations General Assembly designated the day in 2007 as a way to raise autism acceptance and help those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Since it's launch in 2010, the iPad and iPad apps have been a tool in providing that help, and in aiding those with autism in finding their voice.

According to the CDC, one in 68 kids in the U.S. are on the autistic spectrum. According to a study by UCLA, using the iPad can help minimally verbal children more than double the amount of words in their vocabulary, and the earlier they start, the better they do.

Guided access

Guide access that lets you lock the iPhone or iPad to a single app. For as long as guided access is enabled, only that one specific app can be used, and there's no way to exit it for the Home screen or any other app. That can make Guided Access extremely useful for people on the autistic spectrum who need assistance focusing or with fine motor challenges.

Proloquo2Go

An argumentative and alternative communications (aac) app, Proloquo2Go is for anyone on the autistic spectrum who has trouble speaking. It provides natural-sounding text-to-speech voices, including American English, Australian English, British English, and bilingual American Spanish-English for children.

Grace

Grace helps give people on the autistic spectrum a voice by letting them assemble sentences based on images.

Proloquo4Text

Proloquo4Text offers natural sounding voices in 15 languages with word and sentence prediction and a customizable screen layout for easy conversation.

Autismate365

Autismate's comprehensive approach encourages the user to develop communication and behavioral skills simultaneously.

FlummoxVision

Flummox and Friends is a fun, quirky live-action comedy show that tries to help kids learn and understand the social and emotional dynamics of the world around them.

Kid in Story Book Maker

Stories are powerful and visual stories even more more so. For children on the autistic spectrum, Kid in Store can be a fun way to learn language skills and social modeling.

Keeble

Keeble is a keyboard designed for accessibility. It helps those with fine motor challenges and others better and more easily input text, with word prediction, timing options, and more.

Pictello

Pictello allows someone on the autistic spectrum to create simple talking photo albums an books. You get one image and up to fixe lines of text per page, and audio can be recorded or added using high-quality text-to-speech voices.

Choiceworks

For those on the autistic spectrum, daily routines can be anything but routine. Choiceworks helps by providing management tools that encourage emotional control and patience.

iDress for Weather

How should you dress if it's warm outside? If it's cold? If it's somewhere in between. iDress for Weather uses a customizable closet to help personalize the connection between what the weather's like and what clothing they should wear.

PuddingStone

PuddingStone, developed with the Boston Children's Hospital, is a way to help make language development not only interactive, but fun.

ChatterPix Kids

Take a photo, draw a line to make a mouth, record your voice, and, with ChatterPix Kids, your pictures can now speak.

Toca Band

Toca Band promotes learning sounds, beats, and rhythms through play and experimentation.

Toca Town

How a city works and what various locations are for, like stores, parks, and restaurants, are discoverable and learnable through Toca Town.

Peek A Zoo

Discovering animals, learning their names, and identifying social cues lets Peek a Zoo help engage children and build interactive experience.

Injini: Child Development Game Suite

The Injini collection of learning games can help with cognitive, language, and fine motor skills in a fun yet functional way.

Tiggly Counts

Tiggly Counts is a math toy for iPad that helps pre-schoolers and kindergartners (age three and older) develop early numeracy, counting, and math skills. It includes a set of five sleek, magnetic counting toys that interact with three different learning apps on your iPad.

Todo Number Matrix

Todo Number Matrix lets kids practice match skills with fun, challenging matrices.

Motion Math: Pizza!

With Motion Math: Pizza! kids can learn everything from basic arithmetic to economics by buying ingredients, designing pizzas, setting prices, and serving customers in a fun, simple simulator.

And more!

The iPad and the App Store make computing more available and accessible to everyone, including those on the autistic spectrum. If you or someone you know and love is using the iPad and iPad apps to help with autism and autism awareness, please let me know how!

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

9 Comments
  • I get how most of these apps would help those on the spectrum but the iDress app makes no since because shouldn't it be obvious what your should wear regardless of your spectrum status. Is there something I'm not aware of?
  • Nice list. I'm going to share it with my wife, who is a developmental therapist and works with Autistic children. That said, not all people with Autism are children. My oldest is 19 and is on the autism spectrum. While there is a lot of attention and focus on children with autism, there is very little for those same children as they age. Providing for teens and adults with Autism is perhaps where the most focus is needed because they will be adults in a world that doesn't understand them longer than they are in early intervention programs. </End of Rant>
  • No. Some people with Autism really do have trouble understanding the world around them, even stuff that should be obvious. Good article Rene.
  • I guess that's the case, I kinda saw that app and only saw it from my point of view, which was, "How lazy do you have to be to not look outside or something to decide what to wear?". I honestly thought it was just a product of having an app for everything.
  • It's worth pointing out that this is 1 one study done on a small number of people. It's interesting, but it's just one small data point in the process of learning what helps autistic people.
  • Tarozq That may have been what it was designed for (I'm thinking little kids) but that doesn't mean it can't dp double duty.
  • Oh no doubt, its just a little weird idea for an app to me. That doesn't destroy its usefulness.
  • Butchered your name. Sorry
  • I have Asperger's Syndrome and I would have loved to have devices like the iPad when I was a kid. Sent from the iMore App