Special Words app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: Special iApps C.I.C.
First release : 01 Sep 2011
App size: 61.67 Mb
Achieve educational milestones with our award-winning app designed for speech and language development. An invaluable app for visual learners that is adaptable to children’s individual needs and abilities.
Children, parents, teachers and professionals in 100+ countries and 27+ languages are using Special Words to turn screen time into an active and engaging learning experience.
Areas of Development
• Enhance communication, language and literacy skills
• Increase sight-word vocabulary
• Encourage listening and speaking skills
• Develop hand-eye coordination
• Improve fine motor skills
Personalize to Suit Abilities
• Use your own text and photos to harness interests and personalize activities
• Include your voice or audio to bring the learning experience to life
• Create word lists tailored to children’s learning needs
• Adjustable animation speed to suit abilities and concentration levels
• Activities adaptable to any developmental stage and for adults with learning difficulties and memory impairment
• Can be fully customized to grow with a child as they develop
Share Your Words
• Copy content to and from the app on another device
• Exchange stories using AirDrop, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cloud or email
• Transfer content to and from our Special Stories, Special Spelling and Special Sentences apps
Accessible For All
• Support for switch users
• Variety of fonts, plus a large text option to support those with visual impairments and dyslexia
• Use at home, school, in speech or occupational therapy sessions, and for home schooling to follow the curriculum and enhance learning
• Proven to be accessible and hold the attention of children with a variety of abilities and skill sets
Extra Features with Special Words Pro
For teachers and speech & language professionals we recommend the professional edition of this app, Special Words Pro. It includes:
• Printable PDF assessment sheets
• Printable cards to use in paper-based activities
• Free access to curriculum-related content
• Dual control using external keyboard
Reviews from Parents and Professionals
“Special Words is a clever and intuitive app. The developers have clearly drawn upon what works for young learners with special needs.”
Educational App Store, 5 Star Teacher Rating
“One of our pupils does not read or write so checking and questioning understanding is very difficult. He responded very quickly and positively to the app. Without it we would have no idea exactly what he is capable of achieving.”
Emma Watts, Teaching Assistant
“This is without a doubt the best app I have some across for children with special needs. My son signs for more as soon as he completes one set of words!”
Helen, Parent and Teacher
Speak Your Language
• Special Words includes 96 pictures, spoken words and written text in 27 languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Dutch, English (American, British and Australian), Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Welsh
• All languages use audio provided from native speakers
• Replace words and re-record audio in any other language your child uses
Why Our Apps Are Different
• Visually clear and simple, with no distracting backgrounds or noises
• Tested and recommended by Down syndrome and ASD experts and organizations around the world
• No in-app purchases, pop-up ads or user tracking
• Developed in collaboration with parents, professionals and teachers of children with special educational needs
Part of the Special iApps Family
Special iApps is a multi-award-winning non-profit social enterprise with a worldwide reputation for creating educational apps for those with learning disabilities and additional needs, as well as in preschool education. They initially created apps to teach their youngest son William, who has Down syndrome and autism, now they support children internationally.
Latest reviews of Special Words app for iPhone and iPad
My child with Down syndrome learned to read a few dozen sight words at 2 years old through a basic flash card app. I bought this app by recommendation of our developmental pediatrician to help his speech clarity, expand his vocabulary, and add more sight words. I like that I can add words and custom pictures. But we almost always are trying to use it on my iPhone and the words and boxes are just too small! Please add a customization to change the box size, or at least an option to rotate the screen and increase the fonts to readable size on our smaller-than-iPad devices. Its what we have with us all the time so we will get more practice of we can see them better. Thanks for making such a great app for visual readers!
Easy to customize.
The perfect app for my son. Easy to use and just plain old matching words and sounds to pictures no bells or whistles. I cant tell you how much I love this app.
This is one of the best apps I have purchased to use with my lower functioning 13 y.o. son with autism on his new iPad. I like the ability to customize. The children in the photos are cute but it would be nice to have a mixture of different people/ages for the action words. I also would like to have a choice of reward noises instead of just the clapping. I was looking for this type of app for some time now and this one does not disappoint. I will recommend it to my sons therapists and other parents.
My 3.5 year old learned to read using the See and Learn program. He loves this app! We like the customize function--very helpful to work on the vocabulary hes learning at the moment and easy to do. We even recorded his voice saying the words, which is super cute.