Open-source messenger for autistic children released

Immediately the source code on GitHub .

Emoji is very cool, but sometimes not enough. There are groups of users with limited communicative abilities who need something even simpler. Ideally, that would be "it speaks and shows itself." So far, some intermediate options have to be invented.

At the Technology of Equal Opportunities hackathon, which was held in autumn 2014 in Moscow, Anna Moskvichyova spoke about her idea of ​​the Sesame messenger: an application in Russian for a tablet that allows children to talk in pictures(specialized pictograms) from which you can compose complete messages. With such a messenger, people with limited communicative abilities and their relatives will have a chance to mitigate stressful situations caused by communication problems at a distance. The idea of ​​proto-prototype won and turned into a ready-made application.

The link above contains the source code of the resulting product.

500 black-and-white pictograms of an international standard, which can be sent from a tablet to android via Vkontakte messages Those. parents simply add their child as friends and put this application to him / her and exchange pictograms.

It passed limited testing on a group of children with autism, and reviews were generally positive.

As always, the project requires some refinement - adaptation of the interface for small screens, version for IOS, etc., etc. All in all, fork me on github !

Where to learn more about the approach to solving the problem of communicating with autistic people:

1. Forst L., Bondi E. “Card-Based Alternative Communication System (PECS). M .: Terevinth, 2011.
2. Falck K. The Practical Application of Pictogram. Specialpedagogiska institutet och Kerstin Falck. Lycksele. 2001.
3. Collection of articles of the international scientific and practical conference September 18-20, 2014 “Alternative and additional communication as a basis for the development, rehabilitation and education of people with developmental disorders” / Edited by V. L. Ryskina.
4. Techner S. von, Martinsen H. Introduction to alternative and additional communication: gestures and graphic symbols for people with motor and intellectual disabilities, as well as with autism spectrum disorders. M .: Terevinth, 2014.

P.S. The current version of the product was created by Anna Moskvichyova (UX-design and interface design), Olga Bogdanova (defectologist), Serob Balyan and Suren Abrahamyan (developers). The hackathon was conducted by the Greenhouse of Social Technologies and the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education.