Apple Highlights Apps to Help Families Manage Autism During the Coronavirus
Child using Apple apps to learn and have fun during the coronavirus
People are going through a difficult and frustrating situation right now being under lockdown and quarantine because of coronavirus. Many parents are home with their children, which means that their entire schedules and lives have been disrupted. This makes it harder for parents to find a way to keep them occupied. For World Autism Acceptance Day on April 2, 2020, Apple highlighted apps that give the parents and families with neurodiverse kids tips on ways to promote creativity and home education.
Parents with children with autism can look for a collection of different apps designed to aid in learning, creativity, and communication. Please see a list of some apps they recommended below.
The Proloquo2Go app helps nonverbal users, or those who have trouble speaking, to strengthen their verbal communication skills. The argumentative and alternative communication tool lets children with autism tap on images and words to help them express themselves. It helps teach and build vocabulary by assigning a symbol to a word. The core words, or those the user would need to access most often, stay in one location. Another good thing about the app is that it’s available in English, Spanish, French, and Dutch and supports bilingual use, meaning that it is easy to swap between different languages.
The Proloquo2Go app is compatible with iPhone, iPad, iMessage and Apple Watch. If you’re thinking of getting Proloquo2Go for your family, AssistiveWare is offering a discount during Autism Acceptance Month.
Art is very important for individuals on the spectrum. According to a 2017 report from Autism Care Today, because it helps them with their self-expression, imagination, and creativity. For kids that love art they can purchase the Procreate Design App, which lets them sketch, paint, doodle, animate and create whatever their imagination allows them to. The Procreate Design App costs $10 and is compatible with an iPhone and an iPad.
If children and adults with autism or ADHD are having trouble translating their daily schedule into easy images, they can get the Todo Visual Schedule app from Enuma, which is a picture-based planner. It’s very easy to understand and manage what activity they're doing at the moment, it’s duration, the number of tasks to complete, when to start a new task and when a new schedule activity is going to happen. It is compatible with iPhone and Apple Watch.
According to a report in Nurse Journal, music can help children on the autism spectrum by building their self-awareness, improving relationships, and encouraging communication and interactions with others. There’s an app for children that love music called The Skoog app. This app lets them use a lot of different instruments, explore scales and play their favorite songs. The app can sync with your Apple Music library or Spotify premium account. The only potential downside is that the free app requires a Skoog 2.0 device to work. You can order one online from Apple for about $199.
The Hopster Saturday Club for Kids is a free app that helps with understanding emotions: whether it be the child's own emotions or the emotions of others. With the use of mini-games, Hopster teaches children to identify facial expressions, match feelings to expressions, use emotional vocabulary, understand their own emotions and feel and show empathy to others.