ACA - Learning with Alternative Communication

Abstract

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have a language acquisition difficulty that can already be observed in the first years of life. Impairment in spoken language can negatively affect the social development of these children. Some studies acknowledge that even with a delay in language, children with ASD can acquire speech as soon as an intervention is made early in their lives. This paper presents an application called ACA (Learning with Alternative Communication) that would help these children to acquire an essential linguistic repertoire for the accomplishment of their Daily Life Activities (ADLs). ACA is an Android application that uses alternative communication with voice synthesis, which was developed to help children within the autistic spectrum to identify objects, memorize their names, learn phonemes, visualize some morphological information related to some objects and also help them in the syllabic and pre-syllabic phases of the literacy process.