“AUTISMSPEAKS: CREATION OF A DIGITAL PECS APP”

Abstract

People diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorder or ASD face issues with social interaction due to their limited abilities to communicate. This is a problem because ASD patients may be developed according to their age, but have poor social and emotional capabilities that restrict their opportunity to interact with society. Therefore, various communication strategies are used. For example, Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is a methodology created in order to promote communication of ASD patients, develop speech and their ability to share feelings and needs. It is based on the usage of physical cards with images to construct sentences. However, there are several limitations. Physical cards have only a text name of image and a lack of spoken words or audible response hinders the learning of language and speech. Furthermore, traditional PECS has physical limitations in terms of the amount of cards that can be carried by patients. Such issues can be solved by the creation of digital PECS in a form of mobile application with a broad image library and Text-to-Speech (TTS) system. PECS and related applications have already been created. However, they do not support Kazakh language and can not be accessed through various types of devices, and this causes inconvenience for users. In addition, the existing applications use illustrations for cards, while using realistic images seems to be more efficient in learning. Therefore, our aim is to consider the issues mentioned above and to develop a multi-user PECS application with a library of actual images in three languages.