The joys and challenges of designing communications technology for children with mental challenges
Professor Arun Mehta
IIMT, Meerut

Wasted Talent
Page one: daily torture of 4 year old child
Page two: precious time lost due to lack of communication

Mental challenges neglected
No research
Many conditions lumped together
No data
No plans for education
No human rights

Problem from ICT perspective
Each child unique, depends on what attack(s), what was happening in brain development at the time, weakness in immune system, etc
There could be sensitivity isses, e.g. to light, sounds, touch

Skid
Free and open source software for kids with special needs, so they can:
Communicate
Play
Learn
(Web based)

Advantages of Web-based software
Easier maintenance on server, instead of each client
Web is highly accessible, multilingual
Frameworks such as Ruby on Rails make programming a joy

Input
Mouse
Touch screen
Joystick, wheel, game controller... using 1 or 5 buttons, (but only in Linux)
Keyboard with large keys

Output
Text in user selected fonts, sizes and colours
Images
Text to speech (using Festival in Linux)
Everything possible in a web page

Structure
Based on Ruby on Rails (only Ruby and HTML skills needed)
Highly modular structure: Each module only 30-50 lines
Accessible to blind programmers

Development Process
Many modules written by computer students during summer training
Active involvement of the disabled and their caregivers

RoR from designer perspective
Separation of calculation (programmer part) from page layout
For instance to display 'n' copies of an image:
<% @n.times do %>
	<IMG .... />
<% end %>

Module Selection
Selector Module
Module Combos for frequent tasks (writing, photo-editing,..)

Picture Editing
Picbrowser for picture selection
Modules to crop, rotate and add special effects

Typing
Words modules does smart spell checking, reducing typing effort
Sentences module identifies standard sentences containing the words typed as above

Using Text
Wikipedia search for last word typed
Bulletin boards
E-Mail

Fun
Simple games (e.g. Nim)
Changing fonts and colours

Future Plans
More advanced photo editing
Blogging
Use of APIs

How you can help
Know a child who could use this? Mail arun.mehta@gmail.com
Know some programming and would like to make a module? Free online workshop Sunday mornings 9-11am
Join BAPSI (Bidirectional Access Promotion Society, bapsi.org)