Development of m-health software for people with disabilities

Abstract

There are disabilities like Autism, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy which can be reason for disorders in speech and writing. Special card-pictograms are widely spread for people with such disabilities to help them to communicate in daily and educational purposes. Today, the digital communication developed and different methods exist (applications, programs) for distance messaging, but people with such disorders may suffer a social exclusion given by their condition. For example, autists may have strong difficulties while typing on mobile device’s keyboard. Thus, it would be useful to create a mobile application that allows people with speech and writing disorders to exchange their ideas and feelings in real time remotely by the help of digital analogues of card-pictograms mentioned above. This could be extremely important, particularly in Russian Federation, where solutions like this do not exist. In this article we describe the initial version of the software working on conventional mobile devices, represent further development line of program, and also show performed tests results for target groups.