One of the greatest challenges of Autism is the limitations in communication of the person with the disorder. Sometimes people with the condition cannot speak or understand what is being said to them verbally and many therapies exist to teach language with the use of devices and materials.
PECS is a Current Popular Autism Therapy to Teach Communication
PECS is a picture exchange program where someone with a communication disorder such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or a similar developmental disorder touches or hands pictures to a “communicative partner" to help facilitate communication.
The individual is promoted to give a picture to his partner to teach the word or action of the picture. In advanced stages the pictures can be sequenced to form sentences. This helps non-verbal and children with limited verbal abilities be able to communicate better with their caregivers, while teaching language.
What is Apple's iPad?
The iPad is a 9.7 inch LED backlit screen with multi-touch capabilities of the iPhone, and weighs about 1.5 pounds. It is also only a half an inch thick, making it very easy to carry and handle. The screen is specially designed with a 178 degree holding angle so no matter what angle the user is holding it, he can still see the screen clearly.
What is the iMean?
iMean works by the pad becoming a big keyboard and allows text to be inputted easier than with a word program because of its size, easy reading and touch capabilities. It also has the ability to produce a list of words that the person imputing may mean just based on part of the word being typed into the iPad. This is something that goes hand and hand with many autism therapies. Often children are taught by touching a picture to represent what they want or to show the answer to something asked.
iMean was developed by Michael Bergmann and Richard Meade Miller. Bergmann’s son is Autistic and helped with parts of the development. Meade used Apple’s software development kit and created this app in just three weeks. Meade-Miller is just 18 years old and is a new developer.
iPad is new technology so there is not much information on how durable it was made and what kind of handling will harm it when considering how this can be used on smaller children.
The iMean app costs $4.99, the iPad starts at $499.99.
How Can the iMean App Help Someone With a Communication Disorder?
Children with Autism that are visual or hyperlexic, meaning they are reading at an unusually early age, can greatly benefit from such technology by touching and typing out their requests, and reading them.
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Christina Dagnelli - non-fiction writer with 200+ published articles. Little Squares with Colors: A Different way to Look at Autism is a memoir about her ...
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