10 Cheap Apps For Autistic Kids

When my daughter was diagnosed with a severe form of autism over 11 years ago, my husband and I immediately got to work on finding out different tools, devices, games, and programs that would help her. In many cases, her unique ‘brand’ of autism meant we had to adapt the available tools to her specific needs.

And that’s where this post comes in. Not only is there so much out there for autistic kids–and most of it assuming that all autistic kids are alike–we ran into another major problem: money. It’s not just that we couldn’t afford this stuff, it’s that nobody can afford it. There are seriously apps the cost over $300, mostly for the fact that they know you’ll pay it if it will help your child.

Instead, here’s a list of more economical apps, and many of them have lite editions that let you see how helpful they are before you invest in the real deal.

SpeakIt

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This app is like the polar opposite of the Dragon speech to text app...it's a text to speech app! Yes, our daughter types what she wants to say, then presses a button and voila! A very natural sounding voice reads her words.

Be warned...this might seem like a great crutch, meaning, "I don't have to talk ever again, my iPad can do it for me!" And you'd be partly right, except now that you know that, you're ready to head it off.

The real benefit to this app is that--not only can your child communicate when he's feeling too overwhelmed to use words--he can learn from the voice. Don't worry, you're not sitting him down with the computer from War Games...this has a more natural sound, and he can build confidence in his words by learning how they should sound after he's thought them out and typed them.