Apps for Dyslexia and Learning Disabilities

Applications for technologies like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad have expanded options for individuals with dyslexia and learning disabilities. These tools can help with: reading spelling writing organizational/study skills increasing self-confidence in the classroom and workplace These technologies cannot replace direct intervention, but they can augment a therapy program. Training from a professional may be required to get the best results. If you have developed or discovered an app that you think would make a good addition to this page, please email us at dyslexiahelp@umich.edu. Alphabet Zoo - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. This app helps teach letter-sound association in a structured game-like setting. American Speller - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. This app allows you to type in a word phonetically (based on how it sounds) and it will come up with the actual spelling of the word. It also provides definitions to help you understand the meaning of the word. AppWriter - $19.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. AppWriter is comprised of text-to-speech software, context based word suggestions, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to help with reading and writing. AudioBooks - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. AudioBooks allows you to listen to books. Some features include high-quality human recordings and access to all types of reading material. Blio - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Blio makes e-reading easy with text-to-speech, highlighting words as you read, looking up unknown words or phrases, and being visually friendly to suit your needs. Bob Books #1 - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. This app introduces and teaches various literacy skills, such as the connection between letters and sounds, sounding out simple words, and spelling words you’ve read using a structured game format. Bugsy Pre-K - $0.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Bugsy Pre-K teaches essential pre-k skills such as colors, shapes, letters, phonics, numbers, and counting. Dyslexic Like Me - $1.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. This interactive children's book helps you learn about dyslexia and how to overcome it. Join a dyslexic boy named Austin as he learns about his dyslexia, gains confidence by discovering new learning techniques, and learns about many successful dyslexics. Find the Letters HD - $4.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app aims to improve reading skills. Through coloring letters and numbers on a grid, you can uncover a fun illustration. FirstWords Sampler - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. This app teaches about letters, how letters relate to sounds, and how to spell words. GoodReader - $4.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. GoodReader is a PDF reader that can quickly open Microsoft Office files, images, audio, and video files. In addition to reading the files, you can mark up the text with text boxes, lines, arrows, and sticky notes. iStoryTime Kids Books - $0.99 per book Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. iStoryTime allows you to hear text read out loud and view illustrations. iWrite Words - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Using a structured game format, iWriteWords teaches handwriting skills. MeeGenius! Kid's Books - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. MeeGenius! contains a vast library of kids' books, all of which are narrated by a human voice. The words are highlighted as they are read. Merriam-Webster Dictionary - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. This app offers voice search to let you look up a word without having to spell it. It includes a thesaurus, example sentences, Word of the Day, and is a great reference tool. Montessori Crosswords - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Montessori Crosswords can help you develop reading, writing, and spelling skills. Build words from a set of 320 word-image-audio-phonics combinations using a phonics-enabled movable alphabet. Prizmo - $9.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later. Prizmo can read scanned documents to you; simply take a picture of the document with your phone, and Prizmo will read it aloud. You can also share the documents between devices or through cloud computing. Read 2 Me - $4.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. Read 2 Me lets you import .txt files and uses text-to-speech to read them aloud to you. You can easily bookmark important material, and there are many additional features for easy reading. Read&Write - $1.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Through lessons and easy tracing games, Read&Write helps you learn phonics, read, write, and pronounce different letters and letter combinations. Read2Go - $19.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Read2Go uses text-to-speech to help you read and comprehend books. With a Bookshare membership, you can browse, download, and read books, and you can customize reading speed, font, font size, and more. Reading Trainer - $4.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Reading Trainer will help you improve your reading speed and mental capacity with fun exercises. The app uses multiple reading techniques, and you can easily record and track your progress. See Read Say - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.2 or later. This app teaches grade appropriate Dolch words (the 220 words that appear most frequently in reading) by showing each word, speaking it aloud, and tracking your progress. Sound Literacy - $24.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Sound Literacy is an instructional tool and resource for teaching phonemic awareness, phonological processing, the alphabetic principle, and morphemic awareness. Speak It! - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Hear your emails, articles, and other online texts read aloud to you by simply copying and pasting the text into the app. Then, create audio files from the spoken text that you can save or email. Stanza - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Stanza contains over 100,000 free books available for download. You can change font size, line spacing, and color for easier reading. Stories2Learn - $13.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.2 or later. Stories2Learn allows you to create personalized stories using photos, text, and audio that can help improve literacy as well as social skills. StoryTime - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Recorded by children, Storytime is an interactive storytelling app. Each story has original graphics and voice, and also includes a game to help with reading comprehension. Voice Dream Reader - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This text-to-speech app imports content from various sources and reads it aloud (web pages, PDF files, Word documents, PowerPoints, and more). It integrates with Dropbox, Instapaper, and Pocket. Web Reader - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. Web Reader uses text-to-speech to read web pages, blogs, and other online content aloud. Weesay ABC - $0.99 Compatible with iPhone. Requires iOS 2.2.1 or later. Weesay ABC comes preloaded with an album of talking pictures for each letter of the alphabet. The camera and microphone can be used to create custom albums of alphabetic sounds and images. Word Magic - $0.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. This app teaches words and spelling. You are able to set initial, medial, or final position in words. Writing Machine - $0.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. Writing Machine shows how one picture and one word go together, how to read text from left to right, and how to tell words from letters. Writing AlphaWriter - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. AlphaWriter helps you learn to read, write, and spell phonetically. Learn language basics, build skills to help you write your own story, and share your story via email when you're done. American Speller - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. This app allows you to type in a word phonetically (based on how it sounds) and it will come up with the actual spelling of the word. It also provides definitions to help you understand the meaning of the word. AppWriter - $19.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. AppWriter is comprised of text-to-speech software, context based word suggestions, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to help with reading and writing. Dictionary.com - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android. Requires iOS 3.0 or later and Android devices 2.1 and later. This app includes nearly 2 million easily accessible words. You can view definitions and synonyms with dictionary.com and thesaurus.com, with no internet connection required. Dragon Dictation - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Dragon Dictation is a voice recognition app that allows the user to see the text generated through speaking instead of typing. It can be used with popular social networking applications. iCardSort - $5.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. This app is a great brainstorming tool. It helps you visually organize ideas quickly and easily and allows you to share them with others. Idea Sketch - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Idea Sketch lets you easily draw a diagram (mind map, concept map, or flow chart), convert it to a text outline, and vice versa. It can be used to brainstorm new ideas, illustrate concepts, make lists and outlines, plan presentations, create organizational charts, and more. Montessori Crosswords - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Montessori Crosswords can help you develop reading, writing, and spelling skills. Build words from a set of 320 word-image-audio-phonics combinations using a phonics-enabled movable alphabet. Note Taker HD - $4.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Notetaker HD handles all of your handwritten notes, diagrams, and drawings in one place. You can annotate PDF files, shrink text to fit on the screen, and customize how your notes are organized. Pages - $9.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2.8 or later. This app allows you to create, edit, and view documents. It automatically zooms in on text while you type and zooms back out when you’re done, so it makes writing and editing easy. PaperPort Notes - Free Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later. PaperPort Notes uses Dragon Dictate power to act as a digital note-taking tool. You can use it to combine documents, web content, audio, and typed text as well as handwritten notes into a single document. Read&Write - $1.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Through lessons and easy tracing games, Read&Write helps you learn phonics, read, write, and pronounce different letters and letter combinations. Sentence Builder - $5.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.1 or later. Sentence Builder can help you learn how to build grammatically correct sentences. It includes 100 distinct pictures to build sentences around. Speak It! - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Hear your emails, articles, and other online texts read aloud to you by simply copying and pasting the text into this app. Then, create audio files from the spoken text that you can save or email. Story Builder - $7.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Story Builder is designed to help you improve paragraph formation, integration of ideas, and higher level language such as inferences. The app aims to improve auditory processing by using audio clips. StoryKit - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Create your very own electronic storybook with this fun app. Simply write some text, illustrate by drawing on the screen or upload photographs from existing albums, record sounds into your story, and lay out all the elements. Typ-O HD - $14.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. This app uses word prediction and has a sophisticated spelling error model to help you focus on the content of your writing. Typ-O is able to identify the most common spelling mistakes and will often suggest words. WordSort - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. WordSort is a fun game for learning and understanding the parts of speech. There are three levels of the game as well as different difficulty settings for every learner. Writing Prompts - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later. Writing Prompts helps make writing more fun. It provides a variety of scene elements, words, sketches, colors, genres, and writing types, allowing you to make your writing more imaginative. Spelling Bookworm - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 2.2.1 or later. This app allows you to link letters left, right, up, and down to build words in a game format. Bigger words return better bonuses. iSpellBetter - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. iSpellBetter is a fun game with increasingly challenging levels and adjustable difficulty modes to help with spelling. Jumbline - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Jumbline is a word puzzle that challenges your speed, agility, pattern recognition, and spelling prowess as you try and find all the possible words within a set of letters. It includes a built-in dictionary. Montessori Crosswords - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Montessori Crosswords can help you develop reading, writing, and spelling skills. Build words from a set of 320 word-image-audio-phonics combinations using a phonics-enabled movable alphabet. Spelling Bee - $0.99 Compatible with Android devices 1.6 or later. This app teaches you how to spell thousands of words with clear audio clips and increasing difficulty. WordLadder - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later. This word play app gives clues to help you complete a word ladder puzzle. Phonics ABC Pocket Phonics - $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. This phonics based application combines letter sounds, letter writing, and 170 first words to help teach reading. Preschool Adventure - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. Preschool Adventure contains 18 educational activities that teach basic counting, rhythm, letters, shapes, and colors. Read&Write - $1.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Through lessons and easy tracing games, Read&Write helps you learn phonics, read, write, and pronounce different letters and letter combinations. Articulation ArtikPix - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later. This app has flashcard and matching activities for individuals with speech-sound delays. iSpeech - $3.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. iSpeech is an excellent tool for teaching and practicing speech therapy at home. It organizes sounds by the ages at which they should have developed, providing benchmarks for where children should be developmentally. Pocket Artic - $29.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Pocket Artic contains over 2,100 flashcards that target by phoneme and by position of occurrence. Organization & Study Skills Audio Class Notes - Free or $2.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.1 or later. Audio Class Notes is a helpful tool to record and keep track of class notes. You can easily tag and jump to the important parts of the lecture, making studying easier. AudioNote - $4.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.1 or later. AudioNote records and syncs your notes. It combines the functionality of a notepad and voice recorder to create a powerful tool that will save you time while improving the quality of your notes. Awesome Note - $3.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. This app can create to-do lists, memos, important information, and diary entries that can transfer easily to email, Google Docs, and Evernote. In addition, you can color code folders and icons to help you stay organized. Chore Pad - $4.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. This app allows you to keep track of and remember chores. ColorNote - Free Compatible with Android devices 1.5 or later. Use this app when you want to jot down memos, emails, or a grocery list. You can return to your notes later and edit them, organize them by color, save them to SD storage, and organize your schedule in a calendar. Evernote - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android. Requires iOS 3.0 or later and Android devices 1.6 or later. Evernote allows you to easily create text, photo, and audio notes, which can be synchronized to any computer to help you remember important things. Flashcards Deluxe - $3.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Use this app to create flashcards to help you study. iHomework - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later. iHomework helps you keep track of assignments and grades, and allows you to create to-do lists. inClass - $4.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Use inClass to create schedules and calendars to keep track of coursework, job tasks, and social activities. It will alert you when things are due and allows you to take video, audio, and picture notes. iThoughts - $7.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. iThoughts allows you to easily record and organize your ideas into a mind map. It's compatible with email and other apps, so you can export the mind maps to your camera roll, send them in an email, and more. LectureTools - Free Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. LectureTools combines note-taking with a student inquiry-and-response feature to connect professor with student. Interactive elements can be added and accessed before, during, and after the lecture. MindNode - $9.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. MindNode easily organizes your thoughts as mind maps, taking all of your ideas and putting them in a visual display. This app is great for brainstorming, planning, outlining, and even printing your finished mind map. myHomework - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android. Requires iOS 4.0 or later and Android devices 2.1 and later. myHomework provides an easy way for you to keep track of homework, classes, tests, and projects. It creates a colorful calendar of upcoming due dates and even provides audio notifications. PaperDesk - $3.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. PaperDesk closely mimics a blank sheet of paper for note-taking, but has additional features. You can import or export files, draw pictures to accompany your notes, and more. Popplet - $4.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Popplet allows you to create, organize, and sort all of your ideas. You can make lists and notes, organize diagrams and flowcharts, brainstorm ideas, and even create photo galleries. QuickVoice Recorder - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later. This app allows you to record audio such as memos, class lectures and notes, meetings, and dictations of emails or text messages. It is ideal for professional, educational, and personal use. SaveMeeting - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android. Requires iOS 4.3 or later and Android devices 2.2 or later. With SaveMeeting, you can record any meeting, lecture, or interview, use audio marks to bookmark the important details, and share the files with others. It can also transcribe important audio files. SchoolNotebook - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. SchoolNotebook lets you organize and share your class schedule. Sign in with your Facebook account, and begin sharing your class schedule and class notes with your friends. SimpleMind+ - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later. Easily organize your thoughts into a mind map and customize it with SimpleMind+. You can share your mind map via the Internet, email, and your camera roll. SoundNote - $4.99 Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. SoundNote records the audio of a lecture or meeting while you take notes. You can add your own notes to certain points in the audio, mark important information, and share your notes via email when finished. STUDYBLUE Flashcards - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android. Requires iOS 3.2 or later and Android devices 1.6 and later. Use STUDYBLUE to create your own flashcards so you can reviewr class notes in your spare time. Time Timer - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Use this app for timing activities. As the time elapses, the red portion gets smaller, offering a visual aid. Time Timer also has an audible bell tone played when the time is up. ToDo - $4.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. ToDo helps you manage tasks using audio alerts, subtasks, and checklists. It can also be synchronized with Outlook and iCal. Resource & Reference iAdvocate - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. iAdvocate can help you develop and share specific strategies for working with a school to improve your children’s education. It has problem-based learning strategies, simulations, access resources, and more. IEP Checklist - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. This app has the ability to record IEP meetings and voice notes as well as export IEP checklists and custom notes. It provides access to the federal regulation website and a checklist to review priorities. Moms with Apps - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Moms With Apps is a catalog of great children's and family-friendly apps. Search by educational categories and age groups to discover new apps and developers. Math Cloud Math - Free Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. Learn basic addition and subtraction in a fun easy way with this app. You can change the difficulty level as you progress. Coin Math - $1.99 Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later. 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