Sesame Street

This is one of the only apps that holds my daughter’s interest and doesn’t have ads so I was excited. For the first hour, there were zero issues. However, the longer I’ve had the app, it’s been more glitchy. I constantly have to turn guided access off to close and reopen the app or even restart the iPad because videos or games won’t work. They’ll display a black screen with a circle in the center that never fixes itself. Once that shows up, other parts of the app stop working. This happens every 1-2 videos or games so it’s constantly happening and it’s become incredibly annoying. Probably gonna have to delete the app because I can’t keep fumbling with this app every two seconds when it’s meant to hold my daughters attention long enough for me to get something important done.

It takes multiple attempts at opening the app and closing it (quit) to get a video to play. Once a video plays if you try to go to the next video it doesn’t work and you have to quit the app and reopen and hope it works. When it doesn’t work it just sits at the black loading screen with the circle going.

On an iPad, Guided Access gives a parent the ability to disable the physical volume buttons. By having a volume control on every video within this app, children can turn it up to full volume at all times. With an autistic child, there’s just no way to avoid this. I find myself dreading the use of this app because it’s always being played at full volume and my ears are exploding (headphones are not an option for my son). Please, please, please, remove the on-screen volume control. Otherwise, my son loves this app and learns something every time he plays it. There are a few glitches here and there, and I wish there was a way to download certain games/videos so you could use the app without wifi, but overall this is a long-time favorite.