iPad app for transition programs
A cash register learners run for real practice: ring up items, take cash, make change, and build the next-dollar-up habit. An instructor sits alongside. Nothing leaves the iPad.
I built this for the classrooms and job sites I spent years supporting as a special education administrator: high school life skills classes and 18 to 22 transition programs, where a learner with autism or an intellectual disability is practicing money handling for a real job or a real errand. The learner runs a register on the iPad. Pick items from a realistic small store (coffee, batteries, hand soap, not toys), watch the cart total, take cash or a simulated card, count up the change, and hand over a receipt. An instructor sits alongside, whether that is a teacher, a job coach, a transition specialist, or a parent, and the app records how much help each step took.
Every learner has a support level the instructor sets. High Support shows and speaks the coaching, highlights the next step, and asks for a confirmation tap before key actions. Guided keeps the next step highlighted and offers a hint on request. Independent is a clean run with no automatic scaffolds. The level changes as the learner does, and it is never labeled by age or grade.
When the customer pays with cash, the app coaches the next-dollar-up strategy: look at the total, hand over the next whole dollar amount above it, and wait for change. When the learner gives change back, they count up from the total to the amount paid, smallest coin first, the same way a cashier is trained. Every amount on screen is also spoken as words, so $3.75 reads as three dollars and seventy-five cents.
Each sale scores against a step-by-step task analysis: nine steps for a cash transaction, seven for card. The session summary shows percent independent, a count of each prompt level, and the result for every step. The instructor can log a prompt level per step, including the greeting and thank-you steps the app cannot observe. Export a CSV for one session or for all of them, or a one-sentence summary written to drop straight into progress notes, along the lines of "Maria completed the cash transaction task with 78 percent independence (7 of 9 steps independent) at the guided support level on March 4, 2026."
Large touch targets (60 points minimum), plain adult language, and a VoiceOver label on every control. Spoken coaching you can slow down or turn off, sounds and haptics you can turn off, Dynamic Type, and Reduce Motion respected. Every checkout screen keeps a visible Back and Cancel. Errors show on screen, are spoken, and buzz, so nothing is sound-only. Instructor settings sit behind a passcode keypad, not a hidden gesture.
It is practice, not therapy, and it does not replace instruction. It gives a learner repetitions on a skill the instructor is already teaching, and it gives the instructor clean data on how those repetitions went.
On the iPad. There are no accounts, no servers, no ads, and no analytics. Learner profiles hold a first name and an avatar, nothing else. Read the privacy policy.
Evalve to Independence is a paid app, bought once on the App Store. No subscription and no in-app purchases.