HP's work on autism

2 weeks ago I participated in an online video discussion with Hewlett Packard's CTO, Phil McKinney, on Natural User Interfaces. Part of the discussion which intrigued me was HP's research finding that many non-PC owners around the world are often intimidated by the mouse and keyboard. For these individuals, using Touch technology comes more naturally as people are used to using their touch senses to interact with everyday objects. A surprising piece of information Phil shared was that HP is conducting research on HP TouchSmart for the autistic community.

A recent breakthrough with this is Hope Technology Assistive Lab's Project TouchSmart, which is promoting independent communication, socialization and the inclusion of all students using HP's Multi-Touch computing technology. Early this year, the lab built an Augmentative Assistive Communications software for the HP TouchSmart where the computers are able to reproduce sentences typed by the children in their own voice, giving them more communication opportunities than before. Check out the video demonstration above for details.

For more information on the project and how Touch technology helps people with autism, check out these links:
Restoring Their Voices
Hope Assistive Technology Lab

This post was contributed by Su Yuen, CHIN (suyuen at gmail.com)