Last Updated on April 20, 2023 by Editorial Team
What is it like to be in the shoes of someone with a learning disability? The day-to-day lessons can be no less than a nightmare because they are differently abled. If your child is one of those suffering from learning disabilities such as dyslexia or dyscalculia, the effects can be magnanimous.
As a parent, dealing with the learning differences of your child can be a stressful experience, and that is actually when an array of learning applications comes to the rescue. With the correct teaching approach and pitch-perfect strategies, even children with severe learning disabilities can get the desired outcome.
If you ask us, there is no harm in using these apps in the comfort of your home if you want to see your kids improve their cognitive abilities. But before listing the apps, it is incredibly important to understand the essence of the applications and the working mechanisms of the same.
Benefits of apps in learning disabilities for kids
Learning disabilities can hamper the kid’s learning to a great extent, and that in itself can be a source of insecurity. These apps can foster the learning process from the comfort of their homes and make it faster, bringing back long-lost confidence. They will provide a great platform for interaction and stimulation to the kids to have the perfect learning ambiance.
Starting from an easy reading approach to problem-solving abilities, the kids can have a helping hand without any added assistance. The working mechanism of the apps is top-notch and caters to the needs of special education. Keeping this in mind, We’ve curated a list of 10 really helpful apps for your kids with learning disabilities.
10 helpful apps for learning disabilities
1. MentalUP Educational Games
These brain-energizing games are an easy and fun way for boosting your child’s learning abilities. They help in improving attention and enhancing concentration, linguistic skills, and even arithmetic abilities. They encourage critical thinking and problem-solving. Thus, 20 minutes daily of these 120-plus mental exercises can make a huge difference in your child’s life by enhancing their 5 core cognitive skills.
Link: PlayStore
2. Lumosity: Brain Training App
Used by 100 million people worldwide, the Lumosity brain training program app contains 40 plus activities to challenge your memory, speed, logic, problem-solving, maths, language, and more. It has a free 10-minute Fit test to set your baseline scores and even helps you compare with kids of similar age.
Once the baseline scores are set, it provides personalized challenges based on your training habits and preferences. It then provides detailed insights about your game strengths and weaknesses as you progress through your training, as well as a clear analysis of your gameplay to help you understand your cognitive pattern. It sure is a fun, interactive, and at the same time scientific way to help in your kid’s brain rewiring.
3. Dyslexia Toolbox
Dyslexia Toolbox is the Chrome extension you must have if you are looking for web browsing assistance being dyslexic. It simplifies reading like none other, and it has specific features like the use of Dyslexic font as well as left alignment.
It is like a complete toolbox to ease the reading for Dyslexic individuals, and some brilliant minds have put their heads together to use the dyslexic font to enhance concentration for differently-abled kids. The user interface is appreciable, and the parents need not be tech-savvy to have a grasp on this application.
Link: Chrome Extension
4. Sintelly Game App
Along with cognitive abilities, it is also important to imbibe social-emotional skills in the kid, isn’t it? Otherwise, when they grow up, there can be many problems in making the child interact and create bonding with other individuals of a similar age group. This gaming application is apt for kids between the age of 6-12, (the perfect age for making friends) and it comprises various fantasy situations to improve emotional intelligence.
The game has derived its name from the famous poem of Rudyard Kipling “If” and it accentuates emotional learning. As the kids start playing, they learn what is kind and unkind, and they can have a hold over the dialogue choices of all the characters in the game.
5. Breathe, Think, Do with Sesame
Children with learning disabilities often suffer from social anxiety issues as well. Thus, this app is an excellent way for them to learn how to act in social real-life situations as well as enhance their problem-solving, self-control, planning, and task persistence skills. The child is on a journey with their Sesame Street friend to calm down and face everyday challenges.
Thus, these silly animations and playful interactions help the child imbibe the ‘Breathe, Think, and Do’ strategy which can be a huge asset in later life situations. What’s more, it even has a robust parent section with great resources for helping navigate everyday challenges with your young kid. So learn to live and laugh at Sesame Street!
6. Voice Dream Reader
Is your kid having a really tough time processing the texts? Is he or she looking for a companion to read the text aloud? Voice Dream Reader is the app for you. With powerful optical character recognition features and a hassle-free user interface, this app serves the exact needs of a dyslexic reader.
There are clear instructions to use it, and even the parents can have a fun time using it to bond with their dyslexic child. If you go for the in-app purchase, you can have the perks of better voice quality, and the overall verdict is that it is quite impressive. You can use it to read aloud stories to your kid even when you are busy and thereby keeping the child engaged in the learning process.
7. Socratic App
Socratic is a popular app that aims at assisting students with their homework. The app can find the relevant concepts to solve math equations in just a few seconds. All you have to do is to take a pic of the homework question or math equation and submit it to get an instant explanation of the concept.
Other than Mathematics, Socratic also supports Science, History, English, and Economics. The app uses vision technology to read the submitted image and AI to figure out the concepts for solving it.
Simple but interactive UI makes it really easy to use. The ability of the machine to spit out the results in just a few seconds is pretty impressive. However, the app itself is limited by its dependence on optical character recognition.
8. CogniFit
Developed by Neuroscientific experts, Cognifit helps train the brain’s cognitive skills by offering a collection of engaging games & activities. The app focuses on exercising memory, concentration, attention, reasoning, coordination, and mental arithmetic capabilities.
Cognifit is designed as such to test your logic and problem-solving skills at every corner. Not only individuals with attention-deficit disorder, this app also adapts to the needs of a wide range of users, including ones just starting out with developing cognitive functions and also the ones right at the end of their academics.
9. Elevate – Brain Training Games
As your kids grow a little older, these brain-training games of Elevate can be a huge asset in their overall skill development. It helps in improving speaking abilities, processing speed, memory skills, and mental maths and thus in overall confidence and personality development.
It also has personalized workouts for the cognitive senses and performance-tracking features. In fact, even parents can benefit from this app. Time to elevate your critical cognitive abilities!
10. DD’s Dictionary
Self-doubt is a common observation in kids with a learning disability. Specifically, in dyslexia, this is more pronounced in uncertainty in spelling. DD’s Dictionary does a great job of helping kids with this problem. A unique take on practicing spelling and building vocabulary.
Not only word selection, but this dictionary also helps in audible confirmation of the same. It has regular updates, and the rating is an affirmation of the productivity that it has been able to enforce in dyslexic children. If help with words and sounds is all you need, this might be the app you all have been looking for.
Link: Appstore
Wrap up
As an endnote, we would like to add that apart from tuition and special classes for kids, they also need to go for self-learning sessions. The best outcome is from the ones that the kids enjoy the most, and there is no doubt that apps and games serve that purpose. If used efficiently, the outcome these apps can provide is really unbelievable.