Using assistive technology to enhance teaching for students with autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

Most people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have some degree of a learning disability. Hence, students with ASD cannot learn in the same way as typically developing children do and they need special treatment to learn a concept. The purpose of this paper is to use assistive technology to enhance teaching object recognition for students with ASD and then get a better understanding of how they learn and categorize the objects. For this purpose, a web and touch-based application was developed for teaching object recognition in images where objects were grouped according to five categories and four difficulty levels. Due to several features for tablet PC, the study suggests that the tablet is an effective educational tool to enhance teaching and learning for students with ASD. The software allows us to analyze the data gathered during the learning sessions and make useful decisions about the teaching process. Based on our findings, we offer suggestions that may help in future applications that can be developed for students with ASD. Keywords : Autism Spectrum Disorders, Object Recognition, Concept Teaching, Assistive Technology