Problems of Digital Aids Design for Speech Development of the Students With Autistic Disorders

Introduction

Contemporary digital transformations have recently affected global educational processes in general and, also the aspects of inclusive education. According to numerous studies, one of the vital tasks in this context is to find the ways how to facilitate the learning and teaching of the students with special needs using IT support.

In the special focus of educators and defectologists, however, it seems that the students with autistic spectrum disorders have recently turned out. Their concerns can be explained with the number of factors. As it is pointed out, the amount of the disorder’s cases and variety of its modifications has been increasing for last years (Hansan et al., 2015; Hoges et al., 2020 and others). In the USA, for instance, it was identified that nowadays every 54th child has the said disorders, which is 10% more than in 2018. Studies in Europe and Asia have detected individuals with autistic problems with an average prevalence of 1-2% diagnosed among males and females (Hansan, 2015). In addition, the percentage of ASD-students participating in the common education is estimated up to 80% nowadays (Baio et al., 2018; Zervogianni et al., 2020).

Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is considered by the experts as an individual’s state characterized by persistent deviations in social communication, restricted interaction with other peoples, and repetitive models of behavior, activities, interests, etc. It is also important, that ASD starts in early childhood, and lasts for a lifetime, which prevents typical inter-human communication and development of necessary social relations (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Zervogianni et al., 2020).

The impact on the economy caused by the investments into the inclusion and social adaptation of the ASD-individuals is considered to be significant. According to the recent studies, it is estimated at tens of billions per year in the United Kingdom and hundreds of billions in the USA (Buescher et al., 2014).

Hence, the development of various digital supports for autistic individuals (which can include electronic items, equipment, applications that are used intentionally to improve and maintain daily lives, work or studying productivity, and recreation capabilities) constitute an urgent and global problem, as they may help individuals of the autistic community obtain better life quality, by promoting greater autonomy and inclusion (Brosnan et al., 2019).

Naturally, digital learning aids developers try to respond to the challenges of social adaptation of autistic individuals and their education at different levels. Reviews of the academic sources as well as the evidence analysis testify that there is a growing number of digital supports for autistic students (Chia et al., 2018; Grynszpan et al., 2014; Odom et al., 2015; Soly et al., 2013; Virnes et al., 2015; Wong et al., 2015; Zervogianni et al., 2020).

There are also opened special hubs all over the world that offer educational programs focusing on training of autistic students, and at the same time, promoting pro-social communication activities to facilitate these students’ social inclusion.