apps for autism

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Do any of you use any apps or programs to help you function? I use apps on my phone to help with emotional regulation, daily living skills, all sorts of things. My Dad and I are planning to present at a conference about it, and it would be helpful if we could get some anecdotes from autistic people other than me about how they've used similar tools.

I use the S planner on my Galaxy S7 to remind me of every appointment, or task that I have to remember to do. I set up alarms 1 day before and 1 hour before. It helps to somewhat makeup for my executive functioning deficits.

I have an alarm that goes off on my phone to wake me up at the same time everyday regardless if I have anywhere to go, in order to keep my life routine and predictible, which in turn helps make my life less stressful.

I also use my phone to play a loop track of whitenoise which helps drown out my otherwise overactive mind and allows me to sleep at night.

I find that using a camera to take a picture of something that I need to write down helps make up for my slow/poor penmanship and storing it on dropbox helps prevent me from losing it. Again to make up for my disorganization/ executive functioning deficits.

For each doctor's appointment I will type out an organized list of items that I need addressed and hand a copy to my doctor. This helps make up for any communication problems and short term memory problems allowing me to get the most out of each appointment. Again I store this on dropbox with the date and name of each doctor allowing me to refer to it at a later date if necessary.

I have a Galaxy Tab E which I use primarily to help with my autism. I have a lot of sensory apps that I play with when I get overwhelmed or anxious, like Magic Fluids, Viscosity, and Skywolf. I also have all my iTunes music downloaded to it, so I can drown out auditory chaos and give myself something grounding to listen to. I have pattern and puzzle games like Candy Crush, Labyrinth3dMaze, and Hocus, all of which distract and relax me when I need something more mentally engaging than the visual stim apps I referenced above. I have a text to speech app, and an app called Speech Assistant, which has a large quantity of frequently used words grouped into categories and listed on buttons, so I can press them and they'll say the word or sentence for me. I also have a visual schedules app called First Then Visual Schedules, in which I can create my own step-by-step lists of tasks to complete, like getting ready in the morning or evening, greeting strangers, going through the airport, ect. I also have a social stories app on which I can write basic social stories and add pictures, which are a nice reassuring reference for what to do in situations that make me anxious, when I can forget what I'm supposed to do, like when I get lost, go to parties, or when there's a sudden unexpected change in routine.

Overall, I find my tablet to be extremely helpful, and I think it's a tool that a lot of autistics would get a lot of use out of.

Nice thread idea...

Elevate brain training app for Android is quite good, this is a list of some of the features that help me with my ASD:

- Reading, speaking, listening, writing, mathematics games etc. that improve your cognitive ability is these areas.
- Articulation practice.
- Emphasis training.
- Voice relaxation.
- Volume control.
- Eye tracking.
- Multiplication strategies/divisibility practice.

You would almost think the people who made it, made it just for Autism.

"Neuronation" and "Memory Games" are decent also.

Thanks!

Just a note on apps: I was using Todoist for a while, and still use it for reminders and such. However, I found that I would forget to look at it, or I would avoid looking at it. Now I use a bullet journal, and it's just much more intuitive and visual, and I remember things better when I write by hand.

Reviving an old topic here, to see if anyone has any new thoughts on this.

For myself, I find that searching for that perfect app that will help me organize my executive functioning and help me lead a more productive life is a super frustrating experience. I love technology, don't get me wrong--I mean, I doubt there are many of us who don't. LOL. I still remember creating my first BASIC program on a commodore 64 display model at JC Penny's (It was the only good thing about getting dragged to the mall and we couldn't afford one). It was:

10 Print "Hello! My name is Frank!"
20 Goto 10

LOL. And the young guy in the store thought I had broken something and told me to leave it alone.

But really, with all of this technology, isn't there something we could do to make our lives more manageable? I recently decided to embrace Google, not because I'm a big fan of their privacy policies, but because they seem like smart people, and they seem to have solutions in multiple areas. So, I got a chromebook for school (I splurged and got a nice one with a touchscreen flip-tablet-mode-whatchamajiggy), and I got the Pixel 3a the week it came out. I even got a new printer that is compatible with Google Cloud Print, because of course my old Brother Laser printer, which I really love, doesn't work with my Chromebook and can't be connected to wifi to save its life, even though, it was supposed to be capable of that 5(?) years ago when I bought it? Anyway, the printer works, but will not print in duplex for anything even though it's supposed to and Brother says it's Google's fault and vice versa. So, I'm stuck printing 60-80 sheets of paper every week to take to work and read (no electronics allowed) instead of the 30-40 sheets I could be using. The phone is very useful and I am finding more and more functionality with the assistant, but I swear I wish they had "Autism mode" to make suggestions on ways I could use it to better manage my schedule and let some of the weight off of my executive function. They would probably be too good at creating something like that. Right about now, I would be getting a notification from Chrome that I really should be working on my homework now, and maybe encouraging me by offering to let me come back here and see if there are any responses to this post only after I have completed one of the three discussion posts I need to write this week for class.

Seriously though, I would love to know what technology works best for you and keeps/helps you become productive. For that matter, what else really helps you get into productivity mode? Particular music that you listen to? I got Spotify--I don't know what I'm doing with it, but I got it (If you didn't gather from my programming story above, I'm 48, I feel like as hard as I have tried to keep up with technology, it seems to be escaping me just a little, so if you have any tips for me on how to become a Google master, please let me know). And on to the homework. Hope to read some interesting replies here later maybe, if there are any other night owls among us (It's quiet now, good time to do homework).

I have apps that help me communicate when I am nonverbal. I really love them. They are very helpful.