Picture AAC app helps children with autism communicate effectively

March 12, 2012 - PRLog -- Many children with autism have speech impairment or delay, which often lead to behavioral issues as their needs are not being understood by others. Speech delay also adversely impact their ability to learn other skills and knowledge as communication is an important foundation for learning. Picture AAC app ( http://heartyspin.com/autism-apps/picture-aac-app/ ) helps nonverbal children with autism learn to use pictures to communicate effectively.

Touchscreen tablets and autism apps are revolutionizing learning and communication for individuals with autism. Many children, teens and adults with autism have shown keen interests in using the iPad and iPhone due to the ease of interaction with the devices and the visual responses from the apps.

Many apps developers have created various autism apps in the last 1 year to help autistic individuals learn various skills such as communication skills. Hearty SPIN realized that for children with low functioning autism or those with challenges following simple instructions, existing communication apps out in the market are either too complicated for them to understand or are too basic, poorly designed, thus resulting that they are not able to use these apps to communicate their needs and feelings effectively.

This led us to spend months researching and worked with several special education teachers, speech therapists and other professionals in the design, trial and development of Picture AAC app.

“Picture AAC app enables children with autism to learn effective communication by utilizing their visual learning strength.” said KhengWah Koh, Founder of Hearty SPIN ( http://heartyspin.com/social-enterprise/ ), a social enterprise that provides Solutions for People In Need.

Based on existing picture communication systems, such as PECS, which have over the last decade enabled many autistic individuals to communicate, Picture AAC app is an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) app designed to enable people who have little or no functional speech to communicate using pictures.

Picture AAC app aims to support individuals with special needs like autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), cerebral palsy, speech and language impairments / delays, down syndrome, hearing impairments, aphasia, intellectual disability (ID), and developmental delay to express their needs, feelings, and to ask and answer questions.

Picture AAC app is now available on Apple App Store and is already in use by several special education teachers and speech therapists in special education schools, children therapy center and also by many users in various parts of Europe, Middle East, Asia, Australia, Canada and US.

Find out more at http://heartyspin.com/autism-apps/

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Hearty SPIN is a social enterprise that creates special education, learning and communication assistive technology apps for individuals with autism and other special needs worldwide.