Lois Jean Brady: Apps for Autism: An Essential Guide to Over 200 Effective Apps for Improving Communication, Behavior, Social Skills, and More!

Abstract

During the past decade, public autism awareness has increased and rapid changes in technology have occurred in the Western world. These developments have been facilitated by the scientific literature from Leo Kanner’s (1943) original description of early infantile autism to the more recent conceptualizations of autism spectrum disorders by cutting edge researchers such as Lorna Wing, Christopher Gilleberg and Fred R. Volkmar. The prevalence of autism is on the rise and at the same time the recent revision of the American Psychiatry Association’s diagnostic taxonomy (DSM-V) is heavily debated. Today tablet computers and smartphones represent an important part of our live, and shared experiences of the use of available technology in order to help individuals with ASDs should be most welcome. When talking about technology and ASDs we often focus on technology that could help us to diagnose individuals with ASD and to a lesser extent on their assistive implications. Since not all children with ASDs or other special needs embrace technology, it will be crucial to do some serious consideration and planning in advance. You will want the applications to strengthen the individual’s skills that are communication, social skills or just everyday life assistance. But to do just this, you have to use the application in a relevant situation matching the goal of the outcome. Giving a tablet computer to a child with ASD, and hope that it will find ways to use it by its own is wishful thinking at best. Lois Joan Brady presents the reader a nice story, which I assume many parents and educators of children with ASD have experienced and could share a familiar feeling around this part of the book. The author starts the book in an informal writing style, but with a lot of energy. I could almost feel her creativity and energy to help children with disabilities, and that is always a good start for a book called ‘‘Apps for autism’’. At this point I was both interested and skeptical. Interested in the passion she clearly shows throughout her book, skeptical to writing a paperback book on applications for tablets and smartphones. The book is presented in a nice esthetical way, it is easy to read, the layout on the review of applications is smart, reasonably lengthy, including a customers review and images of the actual applications. First of all, the book is easily read, it has a section called ‘‘How to use this book’’, which I find to be a very nice feature in the book. The author states the following ‘‘more than 425.000 apps are released every single day’’ which highlights the pitfall with this book since some important applications of newer date will naturally not be a part of this book. In the part focusing on how to use the book and the technology presented, the author has described some features, which are useful to know when trying to implement technology into the world of a child with ASD for those who are not already tablet and smartphone experts. In this chapter the author also has developed some icons that are used throughout the book’s app reviews to provide important information on their features. Since many of parents and educators meet tablets and smartphones for the first time in a therapeutic use, the ‘‘how to’’ section provides a lot of valuable information on choosing the right device, how to download applications and much of the process of buying a tablet and smartphone for a child with ASD. The book focuses mostly on Apple products, but it could also apply in a similar way to products of other manufacturers. The application reviews are divided into categories such as communication, vocabulary and concept development, pragmatics and social skills, organizers and visual, R. Oien (&) Yale Child Study Center, 230 South Frontage Road, New Haven, CT 06405, USA e-mail: roald.oien@yale.edu