Interactive Technologies Designed for Children with Autism: Reports of Use and Desires from Parents, Teachers, and Therapists

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects many people; the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 59 children are currently identified with ASD in the United States. Although it is difficult to generalize about people with ASD due to their heterogeneity, many share an affinity for technologies; as such, numerous academic endeavors and commercial products have focused on the creation of interactive technologies for ASD. In this article, we present findings from 19 interviews and 230 surveys with parents, teachers, and therapists who had children with ASD in their care and had considered or used interactive technologies with those children. We aimed to understand how interactive technologies were used, perceived, desired, and discovered. Findings of use and perception included the following: participants had tried a wide range of commercially available technologies but had very few reported products in common, products were limited to commercial mobile-based apps, and apps were typically perceived positively. In regard to desires, participants hoped for future technologies on diverse platforms (e.g., robots, virtual reality) with more consideration given to personalization, customization, and incorporation of audio and video. Findings about discovery included the following: participants chose technologies in an information-poor environment, and although there are many academic projects aimed at participants’ desires, no participants reported any experience working with researchers. Implications of this study include the need for a recommendation and information sharing system to help people choose and discover appropriate and effective interactive technologies that are a good fit for their child. This work also pointed to a need for such a system to include findings from lab (experimental and usability) studies of commercially available interactive technologies to provide measures of efficacy and usability. Our envisioned system could also potentially help academic researchers with outreach to wider audiences.