UNITED Arab Emirates (Reuters) — A mobile app developed in the United Arab Emirates is hoping to help children with autism and other developmental disabilities better communicate with their parents and teachers.
The Babnoor app is an Arabic language app that developers say is the first of its kind in the Middle East.
Autism, formally known as autism spectrum disorder, is a disorder that affects how the brain processes information.
Children with autism usually suffer from impaired social interaction and communications skills.
Launched three months ago in the UAE, the Babnoor app hopes to help children with autism communicate and understand those around them, using their mobile phones or tablets.
Speech therapist Khaled Barakat has been helping children with autism in Abu Dhabi develop their communications skills using the app.
“Our final goal, using all these different means, is to improve the child’s ability to communicate. So the idea behind Babnoor is that it gives me a technique that the student enjoys, not one that I am imposing on him, on the contrary. Children naturally love the iPad, and this is the greatest strength of the programme,” he said.
The app uses pictures, coupled with sound, to help children speak and communicate.
Users can upload their own voices and any pictures and expressions they feel the child may need.
The app is also dialect-sensitive, catering to the many different versions of the spoken Arabic language across the Gulf, Middle East and North Africa.
Arwa Faisal al Yafii is the mother of six-year-old Mohammed Ghassan, who was diagnosed with autism just before his second birthday.
She said that the app was invaluable in helping her son learn to pronounce and understand new words.
“It was very helpful, because he started understanding and recognizing some words, for example, he understands now when I ask him to wash his hands. He has definitely benefited some of the words he now can actually enunciate, Thank God,” she said.
Meedol Bairkji, who has an eight-year old child with autism, Hasan, said that the app was flexible, allowing her to input her own preferred pictures and expressions.
“It’s very comprehensive. We can add our own pictures to it, anything that you feel your son may be in need of using, things you may feel you need to teach him, like letter, numbers, anything really that you want. Hasan for example when he wants something, we can input the picture that he needs and he then presses on it and also learns to enunciate it, as he is now starting to speak,” she said.
The app’s developer, Shadi al Hasan, said that the programme took into account various dialects as well as customs across the Middle East.
“It is the only app of its kind in the Arabic language. There are applications that deal with verbal and non-verbal communication for children with autism around the world that are in all world languages, but not in the Arabic language. So we decided to localise it, not just in terms of language, but also in terms of culture and behaviour and all other aspects that are specific to our societies, including the different local dialects,” said Hasan, speaking from his Dubai office
Hasan believes that the app will help children with autism feel less isolated in their environment.
“This mechanism has transformed the child with autism from a child who is isolated to a child who is more social. They have emerged from their isolation thanks to an application that allows the child to express themselves and be heard by the people around him,” he said.
The app is currently available in the UAE at special autism centres, like the Abu Dhabi Autism Centre.
According to Hasan, the goal is to make the app available throughout the Arab World.