Development of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication Mobile App for Facilitating Communication in the Speech Impaired Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background: Mobile Touchscreen devices are currently being used as Speech Generating Devices(SGDs) and have been shown to promote the communication skills in the speech impaired particularly the communication skills of the children with autism spectrum disorders. The mobile based App aims to empower individuals afflicted with speech problems to carry out the communicative functions of their day-to-day lives i.e. communicating personal needs, thoughts, ideas, feelings and emotions. This App accommodates the individual needs of the user or learner. The ease of access facilitates use in different situations-at school, home, shopping, traveling, hospitals, recreational activities.

Objectives:

To Develop the Prototype of a Mobile Based Alternative and Augmentative Communication App for Facilitating Communication in the Speech Impaired.

Methods:

Mata Bhagwanti Chadha Niketan, a special school, launched the Prototype of an AAC, mobile phone based App, called VAAKYA ( The Sentence) in 2017 to facilitate communication among the non-verbal students. Technology used for programming VAAKYA was Hybrid PhoneGap language. The App uses picture and corresponding spoken sentences for teaching communication. The prototype accesses the pictures from the phone library and spoken sentences corresponding to the picture can be recorded simultaneously. The unique features of the app are flexibility of recording spoken sentence in any language, customization to individual user, multiple users for single download and free download from android play store worldwide. A structured training protocol, preceded by training the trainers and parents, was used for promoting requesting behavior among 40 students with speech impairment. Out of these 25 were with ASD between ages 8-12 years . The App was introduced in a phased manner among the speech impaired students. Students were initiated into the app at different times over the course of the year. The app was customized for each student by using the picture of the students doing the request activity. The students were trained to use the app to convey at least 5 personal needs or requests.

Results: A year after the app was first introduced, the trainers were asked to fill a feedback questionnaire to delineate the problems in use, suggestions for improvement for the iteration and evaluate student’s response to the app. The educators found the App easy to use. 10 ASD students who had been using the app for a period of 11 months were at different levels in use of the app. 2 learnt to use the app independently to convey personal needs. For the remaining 8 the app had to be opened and then they pointed to the request picture without prompt. The 15 students who have been using the app for less than 7 months require physical prompts to point to the request picture. The training in the App is still continuing. The educators observed reduction in hyperactivity, temper tantrums and improvement in eye contact and attention span in these children.

Conclusions: Our data suggests that VAAKYA is a useful tool for speech impaired children with ASD to communicate personal needs. The App can be upgraded to next version.