iPhone apps to help Autism

Hey guys, I'm a developer working on an iPhone app to help those with Autism. To ensure this app is the best it can be I want to know what would you guys look for if you were going to buy an app like this?

Would you want it to be very visual?

I've noticed other Autism apps can sometimes be extremely expensive, what price are you willing to pay? Would you feel more inclined to purchase if the majority of profit was donated back into an Autism charity?

What kind of things would you like to be able to do on your phone that you think would help you or your loved one?

 

Be honest, any information is greatly appreciated, my brother has Autism and I'm working around his needs closely to try and make this as helpful as possible but the wider range of opinions and fews I can get the better!

 

Many Thanks,

Kyle.

  • Hi Kyle

    Thank - you for taking the time to reply. I will have a look at the website you recommended and will let you know if i need the list you mentioned. i dont think you can pass e-mail addresses through this site though, but as i'm new i could be wrong. I know there is a lot of positives to both aspergers and dyslexia but it is the educational challenges to having both, that i just dont know where to start but thanks for your feedback. It sounds like the app your working on is a great concept, any kind of visual software that can improve the life of a child will be welcomed by many. i am finding all this, what is to me, new information and knowledge ( but when i get excited about something i have learnt about aspergers for e.g the fact that some can replay memories etc like wathching a film, i tell my son and he is like....so.. i Know that all my life!!!) it is amazing. I too am studying art and hope to bring all this wealth of knowledge into my work and hope maybe someday be able to bring something positive to this area. oh and the idea of the images for calculators sounds great, my son struggles a lot with problem solving maths, he cannot at all understand algebra, i, my friend and his teacher have all tried to explain it too him. 

    Hi Mama,

    I so understand what your going through, nothing is more impotant than finding the best tools that may suit our children to bring out the best of there abilities in a nurturing positive way. When my son was assessed the therapist said when she tested his visual learning he got the highest score she ever seen, only getting four wrong...which he said was down to hitting the wrong button by mistake!! she said he was going so fast she could barely keep up with him.  The frustrating thing for me is we all too often hear about what our children cant do, and even though we have the results to see what their strengths are, we dont have the the resourses to nourish these strengths

  • Mama, theres an app that may fall under what your looking for, although it's quite dear, name is Pictello.

  • hi, im not sure if this comes under this but im looking for an audio story builder...id be interested in an app that not only gave visual references but audio too? my son is newly diagnosed and they were very surprised at the assessment that he is an exceptional fast audio learner...he only has to watch an episode of something special and he can do the script, the words and the signs... so although alot of autistic children use visual signs, on its on this isnt enough to help my son...ive been searching and as this is only a very early disgnosis (like 2 weeks ago!) i can not find what i want...ideally where i type in the story and it reads it back to me/my son...to be honest i didnt even know you could get apps for your fone for autistic kids!

  • Also, don't worry about the Dyslexia, you may find it could even become a benefit, the best concept artist I know has it, he's actually booked in for a meeting with me on Friday to discuss some artwork for the app I'm working on!

     

     

  • Hey De, from my understanding theres nothing as complex as that on the store, apps like this would often be memory consuming, if you imagine having a picture for every word in the dictionary, stuff like localised slang and words may be hugely different depending on where the app is being used. However, I'm aware of an app that is used for AAC (Alternative and Augmentative Communication) to construct sentences from pictures, so maybe some kind of reverse effect wouldn't be impossible. I was actually thinking the other day about a way to make a calculator app that is visual, because I remember finding scientific calculators in school stupidly complicated  A point I made in a presentation when i was pitching my Autism app to a software company was that for children with dyslexia, any visual guides to do things would be beneficial as apposed to traditional heavy text methods e.g. bus time tables/school time tables are all full of text and usually complicated to read. I guess because conditions like these are so complex theres not really a perfect app to do everything because it would be far too big and with each user being different, you would be in a scenario were users are skipping past content that isn't relevant to them.

    I can point you in the direction of some visual apps, even a chart of the top educational apps if you'd like to have a dander but you'd have to email me privately because if I'm honest certain apps are extremely exploitive of parents and I've even seen some apps sell for ÂŁ100+ because parents with children in these conditions are usually granted support by the government, developers like this assume you have this kind of money to splash around which we both know is never the case and although I'd like to shield your eyes from such apps it wouldn't be fair to bash 'competition'.

    The app I'm working on will hopefully provide a platform for the ability to help parents affected by a wide range of conditions as apposed to my primary focus/source of inspiration.

  • Hi Kylie,

    This is my firsst time to comment on this community site, so bare with me!

    I have been looking for an app that would help my son, i have been thinking about getting in touch with someone like yourself to see if there is anything already available and if not to see if it is possible to create? My son is 13yrs old and was diagnosed with aspergers and dyslexia a few months ago. He is in secondary school and has been struggling so much that he repeated first yr and at the end was still so far behind that teachers were giving him a hard time about being lazy etc, he was finding it so stressful that it was unbearable. I knew he was doing his best but was getting confused and frustrated. He even asked me to get him assessed as he knew there was something up as he was doing his best and didnt understand why he could'nt understand things. I am now trying to find away to get him as much support as possible for starting school again in september as i would love it that if things start as positivly as possible for him.During his assesssments we realised that he is a highly visual learner. I am wondering is there an app available or can it be made, that can be installed into an ipad or computer that would show small pictures for every word, and that if he put his homework or the teacher put work from his lessons in, that it could translate the pics to the literature automatically so it would be easier to read? I have seen a lot of apps available for younger children but nothing for much older children on the higher end of the spectrum that are in mainstream education.If you ar anyone else have any ideas on supporting a child with aspergers and dyslexia i would be very grateful.Thank - youde-de
  • Ok so I was thinking, how I could make something to help my brother carry out aspects of his life, in particular, some things that came to mind were his first day of school, going out with friends, stuff that requires him to be independant and how I could increase his confidence. So the concept is that the app provides a template/foundation for parents/siblings/whoever to create their own content, a kind of, visual guide using images/sound/video etc from their phone that can then be used by someone they know/love with Autism. So if i was using it, i'd make a visual guide for my bros first day of school. I could arrange to go to the school, take pictures that could allow me to show him stuff like, his seat, his teacher, how to ask for things etc. 

    These books/guides/whatever you want to call them, it's just a topic with content really, the creativity is down to the content creating user. Anyway, once created what if you could use the iPhones map utility to place markers for these guides I've created, so if my bro was using the app and was nearby somewhere I marked he would be notified for example he could walk past the hairdressers and the app would notify him something like "Your beside the hairdressers, your brother made a guide for this if you want to try it out and get your hair cut" and he could just open the guide as he goes in. In this guide i could have, a picture of how he would want his hair, maybe even a sound clip to call out to the hairdresser the kind of cut it is. Again, down to the creator. It doesn't even have to be a guide I'm just speaking from a personal sense if i was to use this.

    This is what I've been thinking about, so the parent/content creator has the creative control for these guides, and the actual users, those with autism are the viewers of the created content. It really doesn't have to be that specific and complex I mean, i could have something 2 lines long with short video on how to make a cup of tea at home. I'd like to know what people think about this kind of thing, where they make the content themselves. 

  • Hi Kylie,

    Always difficult deciding what's advertising! If you wanted to chat about the concept I think that may be helpful - just avoid slipping into direct promotion?

    We can see how it goes and how the other members of the Community feel about it and take it from there.

    Anyway be interested to see people's responses if people are up for answering your questions :)

  • Hey Jim, thanks for the quick response! Certainly I've no intention to advertise, simply research to ensure quality. Well I've decided on what I'd like my app I'm developing to do, I'd love to talk about it to see what people think although maybe that would count as advertising? I'm not sure! If people feel theres something related to the condition that they would love to see help for on any app I'd love to hear. I could have easily missed something that would greatly improve on what I've got planned already!

     

  • Hi Kyle,

    Interesting subject and welcome to the Community, hope we'll see you engaging in the Community as a whole :)

    Just worth bearing in mind you've agreed in the rules not to add any messages that would be considered advertising, so just avoid that as things develop.

    This could be a great discussion for anyone aiming to develop iphone and ipad applications though - so that's great.

    I guess just one question from me - you don't seem interested in what an app might actually do? Does that mean you've already decided that for your app and are just interested in marketing and costing the product at this stage?