product/service testing

And last but not least for this aisle, cookies.  Yes, cookies are now crackers.  Don\’t look at me, I don\’t know.  Anyway, we have now shed any pretense of healthiness.  These are unrepentantly sugar-bombs, with some \”sugar free\” exceptions.  

Hey, remember the milk section and choice paralysis?  Welcome to the egg section!  We have several brands of eggs, but we also have confusing labels!  \”Cage free\” is supposed to mean the birds are never caged, but there\’s no regulation for the label, so it effectively means nothing!  Hooray…  

If that label is there, the animals involved with the product were fed appropriate food (chickens are omnivores fyi), had appropriate space, and were treated like living creatures rather than objects to produce profit.  I love finding this label on animal products, but it\’s fairly rare unfortunately.  The Certified Humane website has their standards transparently available on their website for anyone that cares to read them.  You don\’t need a degree in Animal Sciences to understand it, either.  I don\’t know exactly what a bell drinker is (some kind of water container for chickens), but I don\’t particularly need to.  

Notable mention to a tiny, tiny corner between the shredded cheese and the pre-sliced squares of cheese.  This is the dairy-free section, and this is all you get.  One brand, two shredded cheese flavors, two sliced cheese flavors, and no blocks of cheese at all.  

Suffice it to say I typically shop for cheese substitutes elsewhere.

And now, the baking aisle!  Lucky number 13.  Maybe it\’s only lucky for me and my spouse, but I\’ll take it.  

I\’m not sure why PB&J is a baking need, but whatever, I guess.  

Sugar and sweeteners are a special kind of hell for people who have to be careful with their bodies. There\’s a million non-sugar sweeteners and almost all of them are awful for you. 

So there\’s the classic: cane sugar.  My mother is allergic to it, which makes most of this aisle useless when keeping her needs in mind.  Mine, personally, simply revolve around not putting too much of this stuff into my system.  That\’s actually easier to do when you\’re making your own stuff, because then you literally control how much sugar goes into the recipe.  

Other options available here include your typical brown sugar (which is just cane sugar coated in molasses), corn syrups (eww…), various Stevia options (okay healthwise but not great for baking due to it not being a 1-to-1 substitute with sugar), agave syrups (fine, but only when liquid sweetener is an option), and sweetener blends.  

For the lattermost, the blends vary in their usefulness based on what\’s in them.  Most artificial sweeteners are bad news for the sensitive guts and leaky blood-brain-barriers of autistic people, so stuff like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose are off the table.  

When I shop for sugar substitutes, I tend to buy sugar alcohols, like xylitol and erythritol, or better yet, a natural option like monk fruit sweetener.  When baking a recipe I\’m willing to experiment with, I\’ll typically substitute half the sugar for monk fruit or a mix of these natural sweeteners.  

Notably missing here is my mother\’s go-to for sugar: beet sugar.  Michigan grows a crop of sugar beets, and these can be turned into granulated sugar just like sugar cane can be.  For reasons unknown, beet sugar doesn\’t harm my mother.  So I\’ll cook with that sometimes.  

PB&J. Jam and jelly are basically just flavored sugar spreads, so I avoid them.  The only exception this year was my homemade black raspberry pulp, which I used as jam.  I figured that was pretty safe since they\’re packed full of fiber and nutrients.

The peanut butter is almost inevitably full of chemicals and sugar, never mind peanuts being a major allergy for many people. I use sunflower seed butter when I eat this kind of food, so this entire section is pretty much ignored.  

Honey. It\’s delicious and I love it, but obviously it\’s a high sugar product. Use sparingly. Also, ideally you want to buy local (within a couple miles) honey, because that\’s made with local pollen and can help end your allergies by teaching your white blood cells that the pollen isn\’t trying to kill you.  I\’ll sometimes pick up a semi-local variety from here, but mostly I try to buy from neighboring farms.  

Baking supplies.  It\’s 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, so they\’re out of yeast. Again. Thankfully I have some at home.

They\’re also out of the largest packages of flour.  Most of the flour here is your typical bleached-to-death, glutinous white flour, bereft of nutrition.  This is the first way food goes badly wrong.  Most commercial processes use white flour when making their products, which means the results lack the nutrition and fiber that they could otherwise offer. There are some packages of whole wheat flour, at least.

It\’s not all wheat offerings, thankfully.  Quinoa flour, almond flour, flaxseed meal, cornmeal, hemp hearts, and coconut flour are also available here. Also, fortunately, a gluten-free option flour mix from a major company.  Oddly enough, this isn\’t my go-to spot for baking gluten-free (there\’s a different spot elsewhere), but it\’s at least an option.  

Canned fruit. Typically used for pie fillings and that\’s about it now. The industrial canning process for these destroys much of their nutrition. I had canned fruit on occasion growing up, but as I make my pie fillings fresh, there\’s little point in buying any.  Moving on!

Dried fruit, chopped nuts, and candy for adding to cookies and baked goods. The dried fruit is basically candy with fiber and some vitamins. The chopped tree nuts are common allergens, and also high in histamines, so best avoided. The chocolate chips and other candy, obviously, is just sugar bombs.

Marshmallows and jello. Both ultra-refined foods. Sugar and more sugar, too. Jello has been off my consumption list for years because of the gelatin, most commonly made from cow hoof or bone.  Marshmallows as well, but if you look in the lower left, there\’s some packages of a brand called Dandies.  Those are gelatin-free, so when I feel like a marshmallow-y treat, those are what I turn to.  

Cooking oils. More selection than you\’d expect, with various kinds of coconut oil, seed and nut oils, ghee, and a truly absurd number of olive oil options. Fun fact: US regulations for olive oil are more stringent than ones in Europe, so if you want good quality oil that\’s sure to be actual olive oil and not flavored whatever-other-oil-was-lying-around, buy extra-virgin olive oil from California.

Premade pie fillings and crusts. In all honesty, pie filling is really easy to make, so I\’m not really sure why these are sold save for the specific flavor, I guess?  At any rate, it\’s all sugar bombs, so we just keep walking…

Evaporated and powdered cow milks, and also milk alternatives (part 2).  Even more options!  Remember the almond milk, soy milk, and cashew milk?  You may also buy hemp milk, oat milk, flax milk, macademia milk… and even goat milk.  

Also, see those handy-grab healthy milk drinks at the top? 

Sugar bombs. Surprise!  Definitely don\’t give these to your kids unless you want them to have diabetes.  

Spices. There\’s eleventy billion of them, but at least most of them are safe. The spice mixes aren\’t as safe, as they may contain powdered chicken or beef or pork.  That\’s fine for most autistic people, but not for me. Regardless, making your own spice mixes is an adventure and cheaper to boot.

It\’s a bit dizzying to try to sort through this section looking for powdered thyme or what have you, but here at least, there\’s no sugar bombs hiding in wait.  

Unlike here:  baking mixes. Almost entirely laden in gluten, and highly processed too.  Biscuits, cornbread, pancakes, muffins, cookies, brownies, and cakes. The sugar content on the desserts is obvious, but the cornbread, pancakes, and biscuits might depress you.

Cake fixings.  Otherwise known as, \”Oh look, more sugar!\” Also artificial colors, which are often Very Bad News for autistic people. 

One parent of an autistic kid noticed specifically that her son reacted very poorly to the color red.  If red food coloring was in his food, it was going to be bad times after he\’d eaten it.  I try to avoid them myself, just in case.  

And that\’s those done!  Next time it\’ll be the pasta and \”world foods\” aisle, and we\’ll see what a US corporation thinks represents the world… 

I\’ve done a similar app review with Woebot, and also Wysa in a less thorough manner, but neither really helped me that much.  Which isn\’t to say either app isn\’t helpful overall, it\’s more that they were geared towards different groups than me, specifically.

At any rate, I opted to try Intellicare because the suite of apps interested me, and because after a very careful examination, it seems Intellicare does not sell your personal data or even share it unless demanded by law.  Their privacy policy wasn\’t in plainspeak, but neither was it particularly long or onerous to read.  So that was something.

The Apps

I downloaded four of the six available apps.  The hub app was mandatory, of course.  The five additional apps are:

Day To Day, the app that teaches coping skills and gives information on techniques and things to try during the day.  I chose to try this one.

Daily Feats, the app that helps you celebrate your accomplishments and prods you to do some basic self-care.  I chose to try this one as well.

Thought Challenger, the app that helps you challenge negative thoughts and control your mood.  I don\’t currently suffer a lot of negative thoughts other than boomerang memories (and even those are rare), so I did not download this one.

My Mantra, the app that helps you set a guiding phrase or goal.  I chose to try this app.

Worry Knot, the app that teaches you how to manage your worries and helps you spend less time on them.  I chose not to try this one, as I\’m not prone to spending lots of time worrying.

Starting Off

The first thing the Hub app did was present me with a questionnaire, to get a baseline for how I was feeling.  The questions were easy to understand and the given answers were understandable and distinctive.  I ranked as slightly anxious and moderately depressed, which is about right given my diagnoses.  Each week, the Hub app is supposed to have you retake the questionnaire, which can then show you your progress.

I had trouble with the Hub app.  It lost my questionnaire results after I loaded it up for the second time.  After a couple days, it wouldn\’t load up at all.  I wasn\’t thrilled, but the other apps work independently from it, so it\’s not the end of the world.  Being able to track my mood climate week-to-week would\’ve been nice, but since my trial period for this app suite was just over a week, it\’s not like it would have given me much data anyway.

I opted to create my own mantra in the My Mantra app: \”I am a worthwhile person.\”  I sometimes struggle with personal worth issues, so it seemed like the best place to start.  The app gave numerous examples for your mantra, such as, \”I am strong,\” \”I am loved,\” \”I will create,\” and \”I am generous.\”  The app then prompted you to think about your mantra and take pictures throughout the day of things that support that mantra.

The Daily Feats app came with four basic \”feats\” or healthy goals to begin with.  These were: \”I completed a task,\” \”I did something physical today (even just walking),\” \”I smiled at another person,\” and \”I ate something healthy.\”  For my own personal edification, I added \”I tended my plants today\” and \”I did 5 wall pushups and 10 situps today.\”  I wasn\’t great about handling the lattermost, because I didn\’t assign a time of day to do them.  Also doing situps hurts my tailbone for some reason.

No special setup or input was needed for Day To Day, beyond telling it my waking hours.  This let the app calculate when to send me the next bit of knowledge about the skillset of the week.  The first week was called Challenge Thinking, and revolved around noticing, understanding, and challenging negative thoughts.  This was not super relevant to me personally, but Week 2 (Cultivate Gratitude) and Week 3 (Activate Pleasure) struck me as more useful.  Unfortunately, there was no way to hop weeks.

Observations/In Practice

One of the things I noticed early on about these apps, at least on Android, was that they didn\’t seem to know how to rudely run in the background even though you\’ve closed them.

To understand why that\’s a flaw, I should mention that these apps include reminders to use them.  Daily Feats is supposed to remind you to jot down what feats you\’ve accomplished so far that day, or a reminder from My Mantra to review your mantra, add pictures to it, or even set a new one.  Day To Day, in particular, sends you multiple notifications throughout the day to help teach you self-management skills, feeding you a bit of info every few hours across your day.

However, these notifications did not trigger on my device if the apps were closed.  Which means you need to keep each one open instead of closing them when you\’re done with them for the day.  While I\’m sure there are a lot of people that just navigate away from the apps without closing them when they\’re done, I don\’t think it\’s wise to expect your whole userbase to act that way.  In addition, most Android apps that use reminders are programmed to run rudely in the background like I\’ve described, so the fact that these don\’t do that is surprising.

I left the apps open for the last two days of my test, and surprisingly, that did not seem to fix the issue, so perhaps the problem is also linked to the Intellicare Hub app not working. 

Also, some of the apps seemed incomplete or not fully thought out, like My Mantra.  The idea was to set a mantra or two, which you would try to keep repeating to yourself of the course of the day.  You could take pictures and store them under each mantra.  But the app didn\’t really do anything except act as an image repository for categories (your mantras).  If you don\’t regularly take photos of things, this app doesn\’t seem all that useful.

This may also somewhat be a function of the fact that I\’m not a very visual person.  So having to describe, \”I am a worthwhile person\” in pictures taken around my house, I struggled.  Taking a picture of a clean, empty dishwasher (representing that I do my chores and that is worthwhile) doesn\’t convey that extra meaning to me when I immediately look at it.  Taking a picture of an achievement in a video game seems shallow to me, even though I might be somewhat proud of it.  And taking a picture of my plants, which still aren\’t dead for some reason, just reminds me of how much further they have to go before they\’ll produce anything.  Seeing them in person is one thing, but a picture is quite another, at least to me.

I did spot typos in the course of the week, such as the one in Day To Day when setting your day schedule.  Mistakes are italicized.  It asks, \”When dose your day typically start?\”  And an awkward phrasing in the Hub app during the assessment, which asked \”… how often have you felt trouble falling asleep/staying asleep or sleeping too much?\”  Obviously neither of these example typographical and grammatical errors would cause much confusion, so these aren\’t really major issues.  They simply caught my attention, as such things often do.

The apps also seemed to lose track of what day it was on occasion, which resulted in a disappointing broken streak in Daily Feats, as well as only being at Day 5 in Day To Day when I\’ve been trying the app for 8 days.  This phenomenon might be related to the issue I described above, with the apps not running in the background, but I honestly don\’t know.

The information in the apps, at least, seemed valuable.  I don\’t do a whole lot with challenging my negative thoughts recently, though I did a good bit in the past.  I mostly don\’t have tons of them any more, and it\’s become less of an issue, but the promptings of Day To Day and the Hub app (when it worked) seemed about right. 

The Intellicare Hub app contains a set of informational resources about depression, anxiety, self-care, social support, thoughts and feelings, activities and emotions, and social media.  I read through the sections on anxiety, depression, self-care, and social media.  The information within was basic, but accurate, approachable for most reading levels, and positive. 

The Hub app also contained a link to some quick resources, including the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, Crisis Text Line, and Suicide Prevention Lifeline Chat.  I was glad to see these, and particularly the variety of available options.  Some people like using the phone, but I personally despise it, so in an emergency when only phone call options were available, I\’d probably just avoid that entirely.  This offers text options, including a simple over-the-Internet chat rather than a text message service. 

In Summary

I\’m just going to start by saying Seaworld overall is distinctly not autism friendly.

It is consistently loud.  They have music blaring in from everywhere, especially restaurants, animal exhibits, show areas, and shops.  As you traverse the park, you move from one noise zone to the next, with no respite between them.  The quietest areas were on the edges of those zones, but at those points, you could hear two zones at the same time, in a dueling stereos effect.  This is not even counting the other park-goers, with their shrieky small children.

I wore earplugs basically the whole time and would recommend others do the same.  Even my neurotypical spouse wore earplugs the whole time simply because he found it more comfortable.

If you do end up visiting, I did manage to find a quieter area to eat.  The Spice Mill Burgers area was only loud because of the people in it, and some of those moved on while my spouse and I were eating.  So I was able to take out my earplugs there for a bit.  I expect during the summer and higher tourism times, it would be significantly louder, but the fish filet was both large and surprisingly excellent.  They also offered an Impossible (meatless, but tasty) Burger, which I was very pleased to see.  The bun and toppings both sandwiches came with were food service standard mediocre, of course.  It\’s cheap(er) park food, what do you expect?

Speaking of which, I did not see gluten-free options at any of the Seaworld food spots I stopped by.  I know Seaworld itself isn\’t really dedicated to accessibility for all, just Sesame Street, but I\’d kind of hoped the latter would infect the former.  There did seem to be dairy-free options, like my fish filet, and a lot of \”normal\” kid-friendly food, like chicken nuggets and fries and such.  I suspect the dairy-free options were more incidental than purposeful.

Into Sesame Street

Nearish the end of the day, we did make it to Sesame Street.  I can\’t say I was overly comfortable, a childless 30-something walking through a kids-and-families-area, but I was feeling overwhelmed, wanted a quiet place to rest, and figured that while Sesame Street was technically geared towards children, autism is autism.

Sesame Street is located on the far right, meaning you have to pass through most of Seaworld to get there.  I cannot stress this enough: most of Seaworld is very sensory-unfriendly.

The front gate of Sesame Street Park at Seaworld.  Elmo and Cookie Monster statues guard either side.  The lighting was not in my favor for this shot of the front gate.

A main road leads into Sesame Street in Seaworld, with storefronts on the right, and rides on the left.  The park itself was a lengthy inverted D shape, with a main road and a side road for kids rides, extra attractions, restrooms, and other services.

A signpost at Sesame Street in Seaworld, with directions to restrooms, first aid station, baby changing area, the Infinity Falls ride in Seaworld, and the autism-friendly quiet room.  There were a few of these signs off the main road, pointing you mostly to services, rather than rides.

The family services building at Sesame Street in Seaworld.  A sign out front directs you to enter the front for baby care, and the side for the autism-friendly quiet room.  The sign here was a little unclear.  After going past the building and all the way to the other end of the park, we finally figured out they meant \”the back door is closest to the Quiet Room\” not \”keep walking this direction \’til you find it.\”  I was annoyed.

Sesame Street has exactly one quiet room, which was part of a larger facility to support families.  Included as other rooms in this facility were a changing and nursing room for mothers, a more comfortable enclosed sitting area, a microwave and sink, and various shelves and cupboards.  The lighting in all rooms was overhead, living room-like light fixtures with incandescent bulbs, rather than more typical commercial/industrial fluorescent lighting.

Inside the family services area at Sesame Street in Seaworld.  An incandescent overhead light shines over a sink, microwave, seating, shelving and a high chair on a hardwood floor.  Also a lounge area, baby changing space, and a nursing area… It was surprisingly well outfitted.  I could, of course, have asked for even more stuff, but seeing all this was a surprise.  It\’s not like the park makes money off having these offerings here.

The hallway off the main room in the previous picture.  A trio of doors lead to the autism-friendly quiet room, the nursing room, and the restroom, while an open archway leads to a main room.

Eventually I made it to the quiet room.  Like the main room, it was lit with an incandescent home overhead light thingie.  It\’s not really a chandelier, being far too small and simple, but that\’s the only word I can think of to describe it.

It was a relatively small room, and I had trouble getting a proper picture of the whole thing.  The room had bits and bobs available.  The bean-bag-esque cushions there seemed comfortable, though I didn\’t actually sit in them due to paranoia about germs.  The wooden box-thingies would serve to either climb on or hide within, either of which seems reasonable.  The overhead lights could be turned off (so I did).

A textured wall toy, one of two such toys.  At least 15 different texture were available for stimulation-seeking children.  I was impressed, even if I didn\’t touch due to fear of germs.

A more typical children\’s toy, fastened to a different wall.

The quiet room was not silent, and you could hear the nearest ride outside (Minnie Mouse instructing kids to pay attention to some kind of nature kiddie coaster).  It was, however, significantly quieter, and I was able to take out my earplugs and relax somewhat.  Out of curiosity, I turned on my tablet\’s decibel reader.

Readout from a decibel meter in the Quiet Room at Sesame Street in Seaworld.  Average decibels 48.6, maximum 58.  Fairly quiet as things go, but not silent.  The spikes in the graph were due to children and the ride outside.

And here\’s a recording taken while waiting for the killer whale show at Seaworld:

As you can see, the Seaworld pre-show was about 40 decibels louder than the main area, which… if that doesn\’t mean anything to you, it\’s about 16 times as loud…  or the difference between me suffering and me feeling kinda okay.

Sesame Street itself seemed quieter overall than Seaworld, though I don\’t have the data to back that up.  It still definitely had zones of noise that you could travel between, even at the family services area.

My last thought on the Sesame Street area was the food.  We visited in winter, so most of the food options were closed.  They did seem to offer the usual sugary and white flour-laden badness, but I also stepped into a couple store areas and found these:

Refrigerated food and drink offerings at Sesame Street stores, including cheese sticks, yogurt, hummus, fruit cups, cracker/cheese/meat snack boxes, and veggie/fruit/cheese snack boxes

It\’s a bit of a mixed bag, with dairy, sugar, and glutenous snacks dominating the offerings… but it does also have fresh fruit and hummus for sale.  The \”healthy lunchable\” offering with crackers, meat, and cheese, uses Triscuit style whole grain crackers rather than Ritz white flour crackers.  There are also carrot, celery, and cheese snack boxes with some kind of dip that hopefully doesn\’t invalidate the healthiness of the rest of the case.

I was Impressed, but More Can Be Done

As an autistic adult wandering through Sesame Street, I was pleased to see some of the changes and offerings available to families with autistic children or other special needs.  Having a quiet room available at all is a massive step up in terms to tolerability of theme parks.  Sesame Street was a small park (within a larger park), too, so while I\’d rather have more than one quiet room, I can kind of understand why there\’s only one.

I was pleased with the family support facility offerings once I found them.  There was no cheap, sensory-painful fluorescent anywhere that I could see, only the more sensory-friendly incandescent bulbs in home-like configurations.  Having a nursing area for new mothers was a nice touch.  Having a microwave so people could heat up their own food, brought from outside the park, was even better.  While I\’d rather people be able to simply buy gluten-free, casein- (dairy-) free offerings at the park proper, at least letting them bring and enjoy their own food is a start.  They did have a couple offerings for people on restrictive diets, at least.  Can\’t say that for the rest of Seaworld.

I did wish the Quiet Room was more like the Silent Room, but noise-proofing is kind of difficult, especially with a kiddie coaster ride literally 30 feet away.  More than one room would have been good, as someone did open the door and then recoiled when they noticed we were already occupying it.  Perhaps an \”occupied/free\” sign and at least two rooms?  It is, however, a small sub-park, and I can understand why there was only one.  The noise level was a lot more tolerable in the Quiet Room, at least, and the textured wall toy, plush beanbag cushion-things, and wooden play blocks seemed like thoughtful additions to the place.

Overall, especially compared to the rest of Seaworld, I was favorably impressed with Sesame Street.  The signage could be more specific about where the Quiet Room is, and it could really use more than one Quiet Room, but even as it was, the place served my needs fairly well. Hopefully it will continue to serve the families that visit Sesame Street for years to come. 

The app is for iOS and Android.  I tested it on an Android tablet.  I\’d say it\’s probably more geared for phones, but you can still manage on a tablet.  I mainly opted to review this app because it has information on my local library system, meaning someone from that library system actually went to the trouble of making these and submitting them to the app.  I actually went and visited the nearest branch, and followed along with the relevant cards while I was there.  I\’ll talk about that below.

The \”cards,\” or sets of instructions, come in categories like Shopping, Personal Care, Leisure, Social, Food, and Travel.  They are all free, and written in very simple English.  You can download cards you like, or cards that are most relevant to your life.  Some of these cards are from Canadian or even British organizations, so it\’d be wise to check the cards before downloading them.

When you\’ve chosen a category, you can then choose a contributing organization or a specific card.  So, in Leisure, you can choose Kent District Library, or scroll down to choose \”Kent District Library- Logging into a computer at the library.\”

You are then presented with the first sub-card, which is usually an introduction to the topic.

You can then swipe left and right to navigate between the sub-cards, which describe the process and also tell you what things you need to do the process or activity.  There are cards for getting a library card, searching the catalogue, using the self-checkout machines, logging into a library computer, and a more general \”what to expect\” card, which basically describes what the library offers (much more than just books!), the presence of helpful staff members, the availability of rest rooms, and other details.

In looking through these cards at KDL, I learned that you can check out a pair of noise-canceling headphones.  This is particularly helpful on the first floor of my location, where kids tend to congregate (and play Fortnite on the public computers).  They were big, over-the-ear, noise-isolating headphones, and they did help, though not as much as my personal pair that has active noise-canceling.  But it might be a bit much to expect every library location to shell out for a $200 pair of headphones, and then replace them when they get damaged.  Libraries, unfortunately, are not rolling in money.

The cards are a mix of qualities.  The KDL ones were of pretty good quality, but the Social cards were extremely basic, sometimes to the point of absurdity.  Considering the complexity of social situations, even things as simple as greeting people can get complicated, so I probably shouldn\’t be too harsh in my judgments here.  I guess it\’s the wistful and tired autistic in me wanting social stuff to be boiled down to easy, simple directions that I could just follow and everyone would be happy.  No such luck.  For basic social interactions and people who don\’t need to perfectly pass as \”normal\” these are better than nothing, at least.

I was reasonably pleased with Colgate\’s series on tooth care, which I thought was pretty good.  There were also a good number of well done \”simple recipe\” cards.  not all of them are the healthiest choices ever, but simple does not always equal healthy.  The Cleaning cards were also fairly decent.

I didn\’t get too indepth with every category, but my best guess is that the more abstract the subject, the less helpful the cards will be.  So, while the card for \”Dealing with Anxiety\” had some helpful pointers in general, I didn\’t find it personally terribly relevant to my Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  Most of the Social cards were in the same boat, and most of the Money Management cards.  Something is still better than nothing, anyway.

Overall, I found the app fairly easy to use, if a little basic.  I would very much like to see the option to make your own cards.  This idea is a good one, but other than my library system, there\’s nothing immediately local to be referenced here.  I could see an enterprising parent putting together this app and the concept of Social Stories into one extremely helpful, meltdown-reducing package.

Another thing I was hoping to see, but mainly didn\’t, was a more non-verbal-friendly approach.  There are a good number of autistic people, especially children, that don\’t read very well, or even at all.  I\’d imagined that perhaps there might be some cards where the reading was optional.  At least for now, that\’s not the case.  The pictures are more accompaniments to the written directions than they are directions themselves.  Again, this isn\’t really surprising, and I\’m not sure I\’d do better if put to the task.  But it\’s a thing that could possibly be improved upon.

In the end, I probably won\’t keep this app for my personal use, but I\’m not its intended target anyway.  This app is geared more towards people who don\’t have personal care and life skills memorized, or may need reminding for how to do them.  It can also ease the load on a parent, who may be asked repeatedly how to accomplish some of these processes, or serve as a support service in helping an autistic person achieve independent living.

TL;DR:  A good, though very limited, app for autistic people who need extra help with life skills and personal care skills.  Has directions for the my local library system.  Needs the ability to make your own cards.