Technological Aids for Children with Disabilities

In some recent innovative work, doctors from Université Paris in France confirmed that kids with ASD find it easier to interact with robot partners. By actively communicating with a socially programmed robot friend, a child with ASD can more easily initiate social contact. This robot friend helps autistic children with their daily activities, giving them a greater sense of confidence and independence.

A company in Canada is helping kids with mobility issues put their best foot forward with a pair of revolutionary robotic legs. These robotic legs are giving kids the chance to walk and move around in ways they never could before.

In Oxfordshire, UK lives a baby girl named Opal Sandy who was born deaf because of a rare genetic disorder called auditory neuropathy. Doctors from Cambridge University Hospitals conducted a fantastic pioneering gene therapy trial. Opal was treated just before her first birthday, and six months later, she could hear sounds as soft as a whisper and was starting to talk, saying words like “Mama” and “Dada.”

A team of students at Tulane University in New Orleans, USA, in partnership with Mr. Noam Platt, Founder of the nonprofit organization Make Good designed and produced training wheelchairs to help children with walking disabilities. “This costs how much to build in total? (I believe each of these was under $200.) The design is really simple. The base and the wheels are made out of wood, and the plastic attachments are 3D printed. It’s all assembled by hand; those bright colors are intentionally childlike.”

The Dash robot was designed especially for students who are blind or have poor vision. It features an app with large, colorful buttons. This toy-like robot is also fully accessible with voice-over and can be adjusted to meet the needs of both visually impaired and sighted children. The Dash robot, available for purchase, can help mediate group discussions among kids with different visual abilities.

The BCI helps children with significant physical impairments control computer devices, toys, and robots just by using their brain signals. The BCI uses artificial intelligence to understand specific brain patterns and send commands to the connected device — like Giselle’s rolling wheelchair platform. This allows her to move toward her toy Elmo with just her thoughts.