Special Stories

Award-winning app turning screen time into an active learning experience by creating engaging social stories. A perfect tool for visual storytelling designed to break learning down into small steps.

Transforming lives in 100+ countries, Special Stories supports children’s communication and language skills, as well as making progress with their education and personal development.


Areas of Development
• Improve sight-reading skills
• Promote language acquisition
• Improve listening and spoken language
• Develop writing skills
• Encourage word, pictures and sound recognition
• Help with social skills


Endless Possibilities with Special Stories
• Explain step-by-step tasks
• Create social stories and visual schedules
• Share information between home and school, with distant family and friends
• Teach academic and social skills
• Make photo albums about vacations and special events


Personalized to Suit Abilities
• Use your own photographs to create unique books to keep and share
• Add your own text to progress from single words to short phrases and longer sentences
• Include personalized audio to bring stories to life
• Tap or automatically advance stories to the next page
• Use at home, school and in speech therapy sessions


Share Your Stories
• Copy content to and from the app on another phone or tablet
• Exchange stories using AirDrop, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Dropbox, Google Drive or email
• Open in Apple Books, print stories directly or send as PDF
• Transfer content to and from our Special Words and Special Sentences apps to extend the learning process


Accessible For All
• Support for switch control using Bluetooth and USB switches for those unable to use a touch screen
• Choice of fonts, including OpenDyslexic and our own Special Letters with easy to read characters, plus a large text option
• Support for Smart Invert Colors which can be helpful for those with visual impairment


Reviews from Parents and Professionals
“I spend so much time making and laminating personal books, stories and flash cards for my son, but at last, an app that does it all in the blink of an eye! So easy to use and quick to make really motivating stories.”
Helen Taylor, Teacher

“Special Stories is a simple app with an endless amount of scope for children with communication difficulties and disabilities.”
Fundamentally Children, Good App Guide Recommended

“Ava takes photos of her day and creates a story which we look at when she gets home. That way it feels like we are sharing the experience together. It’s a wonderful way to explore the world and encourage SEN children to open up about the way they are interact with the environment around them.”
Denise Wilson-Bainbridge, Parent and Special Educational Needs Coordinator


Speak Your Language
• User interface provided in 18 languages: Albanian, Catalan, Croatian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian
• Create a story in any language, a great way to support multilingual children, as well as to teach English as an additional language


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 in 100+ countries and 27+ languages.