iPad Apps for Special Needs

Noah's Grandmama has an iPad, and she is nice enough to lend it to us during the day so that Noah can use it to read. It's wonderful. We can download books of all kinds for Noah, and it enlarges the words nicely for his vision issues, but he still gets the pictures, which are really important in books of science and history.

Noah uses facilitated communication to communicate his needs, and wants (and his poetry, etc.), so I have been scouring the apps store looking for something that will allow him to easily do this on the iPad.

Here is what I don't understand. There are a ton of free apps that do a lot of complicated things. There are apps for 99 cents that have great graphics and spread fun an joy to angry bird addicts everywhere. I even purchased a GPS for my phone that works really well for 9.99. So explain to me why an upgrade for the Verbally app that allows special needs people to type and "speak" costs 99.99?! The basic free Verbally doesn't do a whole lot, and, honestly, I don't know if the more expensive one will meet our needs in the least.

Let me know if you have found any apps that work for facilitated communication. I don't really need it to speak for him -- I can read it just fine -- I just want something on which he can type where the letters are large enough for him to see and I can arrange a few words (like yes and no) in a way that works well for him.