IIT-Patna team develops app for kids with autism

PATNA: The incubation centre of Indian Institute of Technology-Patna (IIT-P) has developed an app, ‘Shabd: Voice of the extraordinary’, for educating children suffering from autism.
Autism is a developmental disorder affecting the ability to communicate and interact. The new app would help the affected children in gaining knowledge of communication through learning of images.
Dr Meghna Dutta, professor incharge of public relations at IIT-P, said on Saturday that the incubation centre helps in new innovations which are useful for the society. “Works on several new innovations of applied value are underway,” she said.
Dutta said the app is useful for autistic kids below the age of 13 and would help them increase knowledge and communication skill free of cost. “Just tapping on the image speaks up a relevant sentence and even one can create his or her own messages easily,” she said.
“The important feature of ‘Shabd’ is that it takes few seconds to add new words from a child’s life to this app in which the vocabulary has been laid out in consistent pattern to ensure quick access by the children,” she explained.
Kripa Shankar Singh, training and placement officer at IIP-P, said the other features of this app are quick action, interactive games, educational videos, drawing canvas and free dictionary.
“This app has been developed by three students of computer science — Anmol Chadda, Amish Mittal and Amanjee. It is available free of cost at the Google Playstore. He said only the resources available free were used for developing this app, which is accessible only to Android cellphone users,” Singh added.