Open-source instant messenger for autistic children

Immediately source on github .

Emodzhi is very cool, but sometimes not enough. There are user groups with limited communication capabilities that need something even simpler. Ideally, what would "it itself speak and show." While it is necessary to invent some intermediate options.

On the “Equal Opportunities Technologies” hackathon, which was held in the fall of 2014 in Moscow, Anna Moskvicheva told 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 make full-fledged messages. With such an instant messenger, people with limited communication capabilities and their relatives will have a chance to mitigate stressful situations caused by communication problems at a distance. The idea of ​​the prototype prototype won and embodied in the finished application.

The link above is the source of the resulting product.
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500 black and white icons of international standard, which can be sent from android tablet to each other via Vkontakte messages. Those. parents simply add their child as a friend and put this application on him / her and exchange pictograms.

It has undergone limited testing on a group of children with autism, the feedback is generally positive.

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

Where to learn more about the approach to solving the problem of communication with autists:

1. Forst L., Bondi E. “The Alternative Card Communication System (PECS). M .: Terevinf, 2011.
2. Falck K. The Practical Application of Pictogram. Specialpedagogiska institutet och Kerstin Falck. Lycksele. 2001.
3. Collection of articles of the international scientific-practical conference on September 18-20, 2014 “Alternative and additional communication as a basis for the development, rehabilitation and training of people with developmental disabilities" / Under the editorship of 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 .: Terevinf, 2014.

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