Apple features many helpful apps for Autism Awareness Day

Today is World Autism Awareness Day, where Member States of the United Nations are encouraged to raise awareness about people on the autism spectrum, including those with Asperger syndrome.

With various public figures and companies taking this day to show solidarity and support, and as most people are likely cooped up at home, relying on their smartphones and tablets for entertainment and study, Apple took the opportunity to recommend several helpful apps to families with members that are on a spectrum.

The featured apps are bundled into four groups - Communication, Life skills, Games, videos and music, and specific for Apple Watch.

A free app in the Communication category is Speech Blubs: Language Therapy. It claims to use scientifically proven video modeling for effective speech development, and to feature over 1500+ activities, including mini games.

In Life skills, notable is the free Hopster Saturday Club, which, as described, has been developed with the support of UK not-for-profit organization EmpathyLab to inspire children into understanding and developing real-life empathy skills. The app also aims to help children recognize facial expressions and match feelings with expressions.

As for the Games, videos and music category, there are plenty of fun apps to discover, most notably the free music creation app GarageBand and the $9.99 sketching and painting app Procreate.

GarageBand features a simple and intuitive interface that's fairly easy to understand, and can be hours of great fun for music-oriented creatives. Users can not only make beats from scratch but access a plethora of pre-made ones, combine them, and generally have a great time. Available are also several instruments, including keyboards, which are also great joy to play around with.

Alternatively, for those who prefer the visual arts, Procreate is one of the most popular apps for painting and sketching art. With hundreds of beautifully crafted brushes, each one having just as much customizability, it's well worth the price tag, especially considering it's constantly getting updated with new cool additions.