Orchestrating Assistive Technology: Enabling Autistic People to Communicate with Others

With the use of new technologies, mainly tablets, there are more ways to improve the quality of life of users with special needs. For autistic persons that suffer from speech impairment, expressing themselves can be quite difficult. One of the ways for them to learn a language is by the use of PECS. There is software for tablets based on PECS for tablets, but they mostly don't seem to tackle one of the biggest hurdles of the PECS system: The learning of proper grammar. We present a currently running case study where an Android app based on PECS with basic grammar functions is being used by different groups of autistic children to determine if an improvement in their language acquisition can be achieved over more traditional methods.