Facilitating Social Connectedness for People with Autism and Intellectual Disability Using an Interactive App

This short paper describes the evolution of a smartphone application, which aims to offer support for individuals living with an intellectual disability. The JAM (Just-a-minute) App enables people with a cognitive disability, such as those with an intellectual disability and Autistic Spectrum Disorder to inform service providers that they need ‘Just A Minute’ to get themselves organised, e.g. counting money. The app offers a simple and intuitive service that supports users to become more socially connected to the society around them by eliciting empathic responses from other actors in society. This paper describes the original non-digital version of the technology before presenting the current app version. The paper reports the success of the app through use case reports of its real-world use. It concludes with a reflection on the current app status and outlines the investigators’ future plans to enrich the service with intelligent conversational interfaces (also known as chatbots).

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Mark Donnelly

Raymond Bond

Maurice Mulvenna

Laurence Taggart

Diane Hill

Pauline Fitzsimons

Suzanne Martin

Angela Hassiotis

Conference

Publication date: July 2018

Publication date (Print): July 2018

Pages: 1-4

Affiliations

[0001]Ulster University

Northern Ireland

[0002]NOW Group

Northern Ireland

[0003]University College London

England

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.152

SO-VID: f1269384-ba50-49e4-978b-ee898e5d33e6

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 32

Conference location: Belfast, UK

Conference date: 4 - 6 July 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Human Computer Interaction Conference

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.152

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

References

S. BjørnebyP. TopoT. Holthe 1999 Technology, ethics and dementia: A guide- book on how to apply technology in dementia care. Oslo, Norway: The Norwegian Centre for Dementia Research, INFO-Bank. Norwegian Centre for Dementia Research, INFO-banken
D. ChadwickC. FullwordC. Wesson 2013 Intellectual Disability, Identify and the Internet In Handbook of Research on Technoself: Identity in a Technological Society; Luppicinil R., Ed.; IGI Global: Hershey PA, USA 2013 229 254
S CatonM. Chapman The use of social media and people with intellectual disability; a systematic review and thematic analysis Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability 2016 2 41 2 125 39
E De la GuiaMD LozanoV PenicheM. Tangible User Interfaces to Digitise Real Environment IEEE Transactions 2015 13 12 3997 4003
Sayko ME TremouletP. Assistive Technologies for People with Cognitive Disabilities: Challenges and possibilities In 2015 AAAI Fall Symposium 2015 Sep 23
C ShpigelmanN. Leveraging Social Capital of Individuals with Intellectual Disability through Participation on Facebook Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities 2016 Dec 1
UN Fact sheet on Persons with Disabilities http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/toolaction/pwdfs.pdf; last accessed 04/05/18

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] S. BjørnebyP. TopoT. Holthe 1999 Technology, ethics and dementia: A guide- book on how to apply technology in dementia care. Oslo, Norway: The Norwegian Centre for Dementia Research, INFO-Bank. Norwegian Centre for Dementia Research, INFO-banken

[2] D. ChadwickC. FullwordC. Wesson 2013 Intellectual Disability, Identify and the Internet In Handbook of Research on Technoself: Identity in a Technological Society; Luppicinil R., Ed.; IGI Global: Hershey PA, USA 2013 229 254

[3] S CatonM. Chapman The use of social media and people with intellectual disability; a systematic review and thematic analysis Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability 2016 2 41 2 125 39

[4] E De la GuiaMD LozanoV PenicheM. Tangible User Interfaces to Digitise Real Environment IEEE Transactions 2015 13 12 3997 4003

[5] Sayko ME TremouletP. Assistive Technologies for People with Cognitive Disabilities: Challenges and possibilities In 2015 AAAI Fall Symposium 2015 Sep 23

[6] C ShpigelmanN. Leveraging Social Capital of Individuals with Intellectual Disability through Participation on Facebook Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities 2016 Dec 1

[7] UN Fact sheet on Persons with Disabilities http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/toolaction/pwdfs.pdf; last accessed 04/05/18

Celebrating 65 years of The Computer Journal - free-to-read perspectives - bcs.org/tcj65