AEIOU News

iPads expected to revolutionise the way children with autism learn and communicate

Tue, 10 Jan 12

MEDIA RELEASE

January 2012

iPads expected to revolutionise the way children with autism learn and communicate

Children attending AEIOU Foundation’s Hervey Bay centre are set to benefit from interacting with a variety of iPad applications, which can be a highly effective tool for children with autism, helping to develop language, social and fine motor skills with engaging applications that make learning fun.

Over the past year AEIOU Foundation has introduced iPads to each of its learning centres across Queensland to trial up to 12 speech and occupational therapy applications in conjunction with the Foundation’s early intervention program. 

AEIOU Foundation CEO Alan Smith said the iPad is an excellent life-span tool for children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), explaining it helps children to communicate with their families, teachers and the community.

“Autism is a lifelong disorder, and it affects people in three main areas, including speech and language, social interaction and repetitive behaviour and routines,” Mr Smith said.

 “We have introduced the iPad to our program in centres across Queensland and we’ve found it to be incredibly engaging and motivating for young learners, helping children to reach new milestones. Already families have introduced an iPad at home as well.”

AEIOU Hervey Bay teacher Vanessa Brown said there are a variety of applications involved in the trial, many of which can be customised to suit the individual needs of each child, including the ability to create  tailored ‘social stories’, which are often used to familiarise children with new routines or activities.

“We have just completed a fundraising campaign to help us purchase an iPad for our centre. In the meantime, we have been using an iPad I bring from home to trial applications with the children in our centre. We’re very excited at the prospect of having our very own iPad for the centre this year, and we will work with our visiting speech pathologist and occupational therapists to implement the most appropriate applications into our early intervention program,” Mrs Brown said.

“Apps such as Proloquo2Go help children who may have difficulty speaking and articulating their thoughts, needs or wants by building sentences and acting as a speech output device, verbalising their requests in a clear, natural sounding voice,” Mrs Brown said.

“IPads can also help develop fine motor skills, encouraging actions such as pointing your finger and interacting with the screen, sliding and tapping.”

There are a variety of applications that have been designed for children with autism, including Grace, iCommunicate for iPad, Autism Express, Stories2Learn, Tap to Talk, and more.

AEIOU Foundation encourages any family interested in introducing an iPad at home to assist individual learning plans to conduct research first, to make sure it is suitable for their child’s individual needs.

For more information about AEIOU Foundation visit www.aeiou.org.au.

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For media enquiries contact:

Laura Daley, Communications Coordinator, p: 07 3320 7555, e: laura.daley@aeiou.org.au.