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Software and technologies designed for people with autism: what do users want?

Published: 13 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Software developers, designers and researchers have been looking to technology for solutions to help and educate people with autism for over two decades. There are many examples of seemingly successful technology-based products and prototypes, yet very little is known about how well these solutions are currently integrated into lives of children and adults with autism and their families. This paper reports on results from an anonymous on-line survey intended as a first step to elucidate information about software and technology use. Additionally, data was analyzed to aid creation of future technology-based products for people with autism that are not just effective, but that also meet important user goals and align to their interests and strengths. Major findings included: (1) very few respondents (25\%) had any experience with software or technology designed for people with cognitive disabilities; (2) when asked an open-ended question about what they desire in technology design, respondents reported three major goals (social skills, academic skills, and organization skills), and many suggestions for improvements to software and hardware design; and (3) technology was reported as both a major strength and interest for people with autism.

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cover image ACM Conferences
Assets '08: Proceedings of the 10th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
October 2008
332 pages
ISBN:9781595939760
DOI:10.1145/1414471
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 13 October 2008

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  1. autism
  2. software and technology design
  3. user-centered design

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  • (2024)A Personalized Communication Application for Children with Autism through a Participatory Design ApproachCompanion Publication of the 2024 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3678884.3681900(519-524)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2024
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