Building the Autista App

Autism is a complex lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person can communicate and interact with other people. Millions of people across the world are affected by it and these are special people in need of help. There are a few apps in existence but most of them focus on instant communication and are rather expensive. We thought we could build something better to help kids with Autism and hence Autista.

The Process

More than 15 months of work has gone in the ideation and development of Autista. The iPad was selected to be the most effective device for such a solution and the main thing kept in mind while developing the application is the long term learning (see demo).

Our team has worked with the kids extensively and support from Communication DEALL (an early intervention program for children with developmental language disorders) has been immense. Learning in depth about the disorder, building paper solutions for it and then translating them to an app, Autista has undergone the full cycle.

Associations

We’ve been fortunate to have the guidance of some of the prominent personalities in this field. Their support helped us arrive at a much more informed solution.

Prof Matthew Belmonte: A professor at the Autism Research Centre, Professor Belmonte’s research centres on connecting abnormal deficits and abnormal superiorities in a range of cognitive capacities in autism, from lower-level perceptual and attentional skills to higher-level social cognitive skills. He approaches this problem from the perspective of neurophysiology. More about his work here.

Dr. Pratibha Karanth: A Speech Language Pathologist with nearly 40 years of experience in several national institutions in India. She has had a long standing interest in language disorders, both in children and adults. More about her work here.

The Reach

After the efforts we’ve put in to building Autista, the app is ready for use. We’ll be working with individuals and organizations all over the globe to take the app to as many Autistic kids as we can and will be continuously improving the app as well.

Do support us in spreading the word and get in touch with us @madratgames for anything related to Autista.

Press coverage: The Indian Express

Launching Autista: An app that helps autistic children improve verbal and fine motor skills

Autism is a disorder that arises in children of the age group 2-6 which makes it difficult for them to understand and express what their senses tell them. There are around 10 million children in India suffering from this disorder and the grave part is that the disorder wasn’t recognized by the government as a disability till 2001! There have been efforts to alleviate the problem but lot remains to be done.

Madrat, as a company is driven to create stimulating games for children to help them grow in a wholesome manner. When we came across the problem of Autism, we thought of doing something and it was late in 2012 when we started thinking about a solution. We collaborated with M K Belmonte, a professor of Cornell University, who works on autism technology and a few other luminaries in the space to come out with this app (see press coverage on Indian Express). After more than a year of hard work, we’re ready with the app that has been launched for the iPad.

Autista helps children improve verbal and fine motor skills. Helping kids with speech and touch coordination, Autista takes a different approach that focuses on long term skill building. The app has to be more than a tool for instant communication. Autista has various puzzle modes ‘speaking syllables’, ‘typing words’ and ‘dragging pieces’. Some of the key features of the app are:

• ‘Speak’ mode to help in verbalizing
• ‘Type’ mode to teach keyboard typing
• ‘Play’ mode to join parts for motor skills
• The only App to combine these different modes
• 5 Themes with over 100 learning objects
• Fully customizable for each child’s needs
• Amplitude modulation
• Graded vocabulary with curated words and pictures

Autista was awarded the Game of the Year – Special Mention Award at NASSCOM Gaming Forum 2013. The app is on iPad and can be downloaded for free from the App store.

Download Link: Autista