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How Aware Are We About Various Assistive Technologies For Person With Autism?

April 2, 2012
by Shilpi Kapoor No Comments
Filed under: AT

As I was browsing through the internet to seek some information on autism and education in India, the one thing that caught my eye was the lack of awareness of the available assistive technology for autistic students in our country. Every parent out there seems concerned about giving proper education to his autistic child but lack of infrastructure, absence of trained teachers and lack of awareness about various assistive technologies has hindered these children’s right to education and other social activities.

Autistic students can use AAC devices like the ‘GoTalks’ which comes with different message capacity as per the students needs and the ‘iTalk2™ Communicator’ which can be used for question and answers, or selecting between any two activities thus helping them communicate and express themselves more easily.

Also, software solutions like the ‘EasyTutor’ that include Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and converts scan printed pages into electronic text, the ‘EasyReader’ which is a digital talking book player that allows the student to read and listen to content through a combination of text, audio and images can help them enjoy the same freedom as any other student.

Today, on April 2nd we celebrate the World Autism Awareness Day. But, the question that comes to my mind is how is it possible to create awareness among the teachers and parents about the technologies that are available for their students that can improve their overall functionality? What are we doing to make these assistive technologies available to the autistic students?

It is time that the Government takes necessary steps to create awareness and make these assistive technologies available to the needy and not just make policies for the disabled. NGO’s, corporates also need to wake up to the needs of the differently abled and help in advocacy of assistive technology in our country.

For any information on Assistive Technology you can write to info@barrierbreak.com or call at +91-22-26860485 / 86