iPads for Autism?

On Sunday, the US news programme ‘60 Minutes’ aired an article entitled ‘Apps for Autism’. As an assistive technology consultant it’s important for me to keep up-to-date with current practice in the use of technology to support people with disabilities. I watched it with interest.

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Click the picture to watch the video

The article opens showing an Autistic young man who has no speech using an ipad with Proloquo to communicate with the interviewer. The young man is able to navigate through a series of dynamic menu pages to find pictures and symbols which correspond to the words and phrases he wants to use. The ipad partnered with Proloquo provides an affordable dynamic communication system which rivals devices such as those from Dynovox et al and for the young man featured in the article and hundreds of other speech impaired people, it is truly changing their lives. So why was I annoyed when I was watching it?

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Press the Switch: Consistent Prompting

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You’re probably wondering what these Chinese symbols mean. They are the words ‘press the switch’ written in traditional Chinese. Why am I telling you this?

When I worked at Priory Woods School, I used to take pride in just how inclusive my ICT lessons were.  We worked hard to ensure that our use of technology was matched to the needs of the student and that the teaching materials we used were appropriate and meaningful to the student’s age and cognitive abilities. We went further still. I learned how to say the words ‘press the switch’ in a variety of different languages to ensure that my prompting was meaningful to students at a cause and effect level whose first language wasn’t English. I even made a poster for the wall with phonetic spellings so my colleagues could use them too. OFFSOD loved it!

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One, two, three… No: Switch Building Skills

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Many commercial switch training software programs feature a ‘switch building’ level where the learner is required to press the switch a number of times in order to ‘build’ either a pattern, picture or scene. With each press of the switch, another part of the image is ‘built’ until at the last press in the sequence the complete image is revealed and usually animated as a reward. Sequences often require three, five or more switch presses before the animation sequence is played. Learners moving from cause and effect activities often start switch building at three presses and move on to more as they make progress.

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