Best apps for children with special educational needs
The apps reviewed are not produced or distributed by TheSchoolRun. All details were correct when we reviewed them, but please note that some apps can be very short-lived and may become unavailable to download. We are unable to guarantee that the app listings we provide are completely up-to-date at all times.
Best for children with autism
DayCape, 30 days’ free trial then $11.52 per month, Apple and Android
Many children with special educational needs (SEN) like autism – as well as many neurotypical ones – thrive on routine, and cope with daily life far better if they know what to expect. DayCape is an app for building visual timetables, helping your child navigate their day with less stress.
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The app allows you as a parent, or your child, to build your own visual timetables using images from its library or by uploading your own photos to make the timetable even more relevant to your child. You can specify the time of each activity, how long it takes, and whether to repeat it every day, as well as adding notes about what it involves. You can also get teacher/carer subscriptions, allowing your child’s school or other people involved in their care to add to the timetable.
The app is colour-coded to show your child which activities they have completed, which is in progress and which are yet to happen, and you can program it to send notifications when an activity is about to start or end. There’s also a Moodshare facility, so your child can record how they feel about each task: useful for tracking their emotions and stress levels throughout the day.
Best for children with speech and language difficulties
Speech Blubs: Language Therapy, £19.99 per month, Apple and Android
Speech Blubs is a really clever voice-controlled app, designed to help children with speech and language delays or difficulties. It begins with a questionnaire to assess your child’s ability and ‘prescribe’ the right activities.
The app accesses your microphone, allowing your child to practise the mouth movements and sounds they need to make common words. It has over 1500 activities grouped into categories like Mouth Gym, Early Sounds, Yummy Time and When I Grow Up. Each exercise has a video of a real-life child making the mouth movement and sound for the given word, which your child has to copy. Using your device’s camera, your child can also see themselves on the screen, allowing them to compare their mouth movements to the demonstration.
By completing the activities, your child unlocks special activities like interactive videos, funny hat and mask filters to use on themselves, and stickers for their digital sticker book. It’s recommended that they practise for five minutes a day.
Best for supporting communication
Widgit Go, £54.99, Apple
Children who are non-verbal or have other speech, language and communication difficulties often rely on symbols to provide visual representation of written or spoken concepts. Widgit is the symbol system used by many schools and SEN professionals, and Widgit Go allows you to use it at home with your child.
The app lets you and your child write sentences, activities and grids to support their communication by selecting the right symbols to express themselves: for example, ‘I want,’ ‘to wear,’ ‘jeans’ and ‘t shirt.’ Their sentences can then be saved and read back, with a choice of different voices: ideal for kids who can’t speak. It includes over 14,000 symbols, covering just about everything your child might want to say, and you can print individual symbols or symbol sentences to make flashcards.
Bearing in mind that the full version of the app is expensive, you can try Widgit Go Basic for free. This gives you access to a smaller selection of symbols covering 14 areas of communication, and one voice.
Best for developing core strength
Super Stretch Yoga, free, Apple and Android
Children with gross motor difficulties or coordination disorders like dyspraxia, as well as those who struggle with their emotions, can benefit from exercises like yoga. Super Stretch Yoga is a great introduction to yoga for kids aged four and over.
Superhero Super Stretch is your child’s guide, introducing them to his 12 friends, each of whom will teach them a different yoga pose. Each pose is clearly explained, with animation and video of real kids assuming the position for your child to copy. In between poses, the app encourages your child to pause and do some deep breathing to help them relax. It builds core strength and gross motor skills, as well as promoting a sense of wellbeing.
The app is designed for everyday practice, helping to build strengthening exercises and relaxation into your child’s day, and once they’ve worked through all 12 poses, they get to take a team photo.
Best for improving fine motor skills
Dexteria Jr – Fine Motor Skill Development, £3.99, Apple
Developing fine motor skills is essential not just for handwriting, but for lots of everyday activities like doing up buttons, zips and shoelaces. Dexteria Jr is an app designed in conjunction with occupational therapists to improve these skills in pre-school children and those who have difficulties with fine motor tasks.
The app features three separate hand and finger activities, each of which develops a different skill. Squish the Squash involves your child tapping on the vegetables that appear on screen to squash them; Trace & Erase asks them to use their finger to trace lines and then rub them out; and Pinch the Pepper involves using their thumb and forefinger in a pincer grip to squash the chillies. Each task is intended to improve finger and hand strength, control and dexterity.
The app is best used in short bursts on a regular basis, and generates progress reports so you can see how long your child has spent on the activities and how they’ve performed.
Best for helping children follow instructions
Following Directions by Teach Speech Apps, £3.99, Apple
It’s quite common for children with SEN to struggle with following instructions, whether that’s because of an attention deficit disorder, processing issues or a condition like dyspraxia. Following Directions aims to improve this important skill.
The app helps your child develop their memory, motor and auditory processing ability through four simple activities. One-Step Directions involves dragging and dropping one object onto another, in accordance with the instructions. Two-Step Directions introduces more complex commands, such as before/after and first/then. Inclusion/Exclusion involves your child selecting all the relevant objects – for example, all the pink items – from a group. Motor Skill-Based and Conditional Directions tests their ability to perform physical actions, like, ‘Touch your nose then meow like a cat.’
The app is designed to be used side by side with an adult, and helps improve language skills, auditory processing, vocabulary, memory, attention and focus.
Best for developing emotional literacy
Touch and Learn – Emotions, £1.99, Apple
Touch and Learn – Emotions is designed to help children interpret body language and facial expressions, and understand other people’s feelings. It’s suitable for all children, but particularly those who have difficulty reading emotions, such as some children with autism.
The app presents your child with a particular emotion or state, such as hungry, sleepy, crying or thoughtful. They then have to choose the photo that best matches that emotion from a choice of four. There’s verbal reinforcement for every correct answer, encouraging your child to keep going.
The app features over 100 photos, and you can choose which emotions you want to include and introduce new emotions one at a time. You can also add new emotions yourself, and create your own lists of emotions: useful if you have more than one child at different stages of emotional literacy.
Best for tailored learning
Otsimo Special Education, £18.99 per month, Apple and Android
Created by parents, psychologists and SEN teachers, Otsimo is an app that supports children with a wide range of additional needs, including autism, ADHD, cerebral palsy and Down’s syndrome.
The app creates a personalised learning programme for your child based on analysis of their individual needs. To set Otsimo up, there’s a detailed set of questions to answer about your child’s level of development; this is used to tailor the tasks they’re given.
There’s a wide variety of activities for your child to tackle, covering areas like homeschooling, core skills, daily life, vocabulary and numbers. These are games-based, for example matching games and jigsaws. The app also has an Augmentive and Alternative Communication (AAC) tool built in, for children who are non-verbal or have difficulties with language and communication.
Otsimo allows you to set how much time your child should spend on the activities each day – 15 minutes being the optimum – and you can review their progress, change their targets and configure difficulty settings based on how they’re doing.
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