Help in your hand
From staying calm to understanding text, these apps help and support people.
There are lots of apps, games and websites that are for entertainment, and they can be a great way to relax. There are others that are designed to help people in their daily lives, whether they’re trying to feel less anxious, hear or see the world better, or improve their reading skills.
For example, Smiling Mind was made in Australia as an app to help young people learn about meditation and mindfulness, which are both ways to focus your mind. It’s free, and gives you exercises to practise for 10 minutes a day. The exercises are designed to help with your sleep, concentration, stress and wellbeing, and you can use them with your family or friends. Seeing AI is a clever app designed to help and support people who are blind or partially sighted, and want to be able to read the world around them. Created by technology company Microsoft, the app uses a phone’s camera to look at signs, banknotes, barcodes on products and other forms of text, and read out what they say or are. The app, which Microsoft describes as a “talking camera”, can even recognise friends and describe people around you. TextHear is an app created for people who are deaf or have hearing loss. It turns speech into text, using the phone’s microphone to listen to conversations, and turn them into text on the screen so people can see what is being said. Its developers say that it is easier than lip-reading. As a bonus, it can translate between different languages.
Rewordify is a website rather than an app, and it’s for people who are practising their reading skills. You can paste difficult or tricky sentences or paragraphs into it, and be given an easier version back to help you understand it.
Finally, Colorfy is a fun “art and digital colouring” app where you tap on different sections of drawings to colour them in. It’s been designed to help you relax and overcome anxious and stressful moments by concentrating on something creative and calming.