Given J-Man’s sudden proliferation of letter recognition and continued progress with picture communication, it looks like he may be a prime candidate for some sort of assistive technology device to help him communicate. While I’m a self-professed geek, I don’t know the first thing about what the technological possibilities are for him. I know a lot about designing web sites for people who use screen readers and otherwise creating accessible web sites, but I don’t know jack about what devices an almost-three-year-old could use to communicate.
Since his speech therapist seems to believe it’s likely he’ll have a hard time being understood for a long while even if he starts getting more words out, this is a path we need to consider.
So, this is where you come in. We’re looking for anything anyone knows about assistive technology for helping autistic toddlers communicate, or kids in general. Please leave a comment in this post or e-mail us privately and let us know your experience. We’d really appreciate it.
Here are some questions we have now. Obviously there’s stuff we haven’t thought of, so please feel free to stray from the questions and tell us everything you know.
- Have any of you used any sort of assistive technology devices to help your kids communicate? If so, what devices and how well did they work?
- Do you know of any good web sites that provide helpful and accurate info about this? (I looked up some stuff on Google real quick and the sites were either marginally informative or just broken links.)
- I have heard that it’s a requirement that assistive technology be discussed during the IEP process and a determination made about whether it’s appropriate for your child. If that’s correct, has anyone gotten their schools to cover this? If so, how hard was it? Did they approve something that was the equivalent of a 20-year-old laptop and you have to pay out of pocket for something that worked well?
- What’s a good way to get ‘loaners’ and try this stuff out before money gets shelled out for it?
Really, just tell us anything you know. We’d be most grateful. Thanks!
Posts that hopefully are similar:
- Assistive Technology Resource for People in NC
- Pointers and Tips on the IEP Process (Guest Post!)
- A is for…
- He can type?!?
- One Syllable At a Time
- Our Version of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) in Action!
- What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like Now? (Part 1)
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
My daughter is like your son in many ways. She is 3.5 and essentially non-verbal, although after switching to a new speech therapist she has been making progress. She has not been diagnosed as on the autism spectrum, although doctors have suspected just about everything else with her. She does, however, have several of the characteristics you have described in your son and I have been reading this blog with amazement at the similarities between the two of them.
We are also looking at other communication options and I started by searching through the apraxia kids site boards:
http://www.apraxia-kids.org/
If you have not already, perhaps this would be a good place to post your question? It gave me enough information that I now have a place to start asking about this equipment at my daughter’s therapy session next week.
We are in the midst of the school system IEP evaluation, so in a few weeks I will know more about what they cover here. Everything I have found online starts at the $2500-$7500 range, which is too expensive for a “lets see if this works for her” experiment.
Best wishes to J-Man.
One thing before I forget, from what I understand of all this, a lot of autistic children have some level of apraxia, but having apraxia isn’t on its own an indicator of autism. It may raise some flags, but there are plenty of kids with apraxia who aren’t autistic, and plenty more on top of that who have various other speech delays who aren’t autistic either. You likely know all that, so that’s for the benefit of the casual readers.
I only had a few minutes to talk to our speech therapist about this, but she said there are myriad options of what’s available, but that finding the right one is time-consuming since even when you get an idea of what to try, you can’t readily figure out how to actually try it for real.
Thanks for the link and the heads up about their forums. I’ll definitely go check their boards out.
Note to everyone – If anyone is interested in collaborating on compiling a list of assistive technology devices for helping toddler/pre-K aged children communicate, let me know. I’d be all about trying to creating a canonical list of links and references and then trying to get opinions about the products they talk about.
Heck, if by some chance a vendor reads this blog, contact me. I enjoy writing product reviews, though I’m known to be honest about it. I’m generous with praise for products I like, and when it comes to criticism for things I don’t like, well, I’m full of it.
As a gadget geek, my engineering brain is kicking in wondering whether I can invent something myself. Anyway, it’s too late at night for thoughts like that. I’m already halfway to being an official insomniac as it is.
We start evaluations next month and our IEP meeting is sometime in August. If you beat us to it, let us know how it went and what technology advice you got in the process.
Thanks!
Please contact me as I am an SLP techno-geek. Also check out these handouts from SuperDuper Inc.
http://www.superduperinc.com/handouts/handouts_topic.asp?topic=4
Good Luck!
John – we’ll definitely be in touch. Off to go read those handouts.
Here’s a really geeky question. Do you know of anyone who has signed on to Apple’s iPhone/iPod Touch developers’ kit for the purpose of creating a much more customizable and expandable picture communication system for a touch screen device like that? I’ve been knocking that around in my head, but haven’t quite figured out what that design would look like. However, given a larger touch screen (tablet PC-sized), I am almost positive I know how to pull it off. I still think there’s a more elegant, less costly solution, though.
I guess my exposure to aug comm devices has been that they’re kinda clunky and not very expandable. Our SLP says there’s really fancy, high-tech stuff out there, but it’s several thousand dollars. Fundamentally, I don’t buy it that it has to cost that much. Touch screen technology will get so cheap that prices either will come way down, or someone will invent a way to force the market down in price.
I’ve been sketching out plans for a DIY device but keep getting stumped at the mobility end. I’ve been doing computer stuff since I had a TI-994A as a kid, so I think I have a decent sense of what is possible. My feeling is that a portable, sub-$500, electronic device and something to serve up the pictures, text, and speech has got to be achievable.
But perhaps I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Not to mention I’m too brain dead to be thinking about this tonight.