Who chooses what I need? Child voice and user-involvement in the development of learning technologies for children with autism

Children and young people with disabilities have rights to be included and heard, but remain under-represented in research due to perceived difficulties in gaining their views meaningfully. We present brief case studies from three different projects which have focused on developing virtual reality educational technologies for children with autism to illustrate how this has been achievable in practice.

[1]  Sue Cobb,et al.  A method for involving children with autism in design , 2011, IDC.

[2]  S. Parsons,et al.  The experiences of disabled pupils and their families , 2008 .

[3]  A. Lewis,et al.  Research and pupil voice , 2007 .

[4]  Gnanathusharan Rajendran,et al.  Virtual environments and autism: a developmental psychopathological approach , 2013, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[5]  Hua Dong,et al.  Design for Inclusivity: A Practical Guide to Accessible, Innovative and User-Centred Design , 2007 .

[6]  Sue Cobb,et al.  A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Conducting Design Sessions with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder , 2014 .

[7]  T. Burchardt The Education and Employment of Disabled Young People: Frustrated Ambition , 2005 .

[8]  L. Florian The SAGE Handbook of Special Education , 2013 .

[9]  Julio Abascal,et al.  Moving towards inclusive design guidelines for socially and ethically aware HCI , 2005, Interact. Comput..

[10]  S. Parsons,et al.  State-of-the-art of virtual reality technologies for children on the autism spectrum , 2011 .

[11]  Richard M. Eastgate,et al.  Development of social skills amongst adults with Asperger’s Syndrome using virtual environments , 2000 .

[12]  Sue Cobb,et al.  Participatory design with children with autism , 2010 .

[13]  S. Cobb,et al.  Collaborative virtual environment for conducting design sessions with students with autism spectrum conditions , 2012 .

[14]  L. Lundy ‘Voice’ is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child , 2007 .

[15]  Jan Gulliksen,et al.  Key principles for user-centred systems design , 2003, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[16]  Yvonne Rogers,et al.  Kids as informants: telling us what we didn't know or confirming what we knew already? , 1998 .

[17]  P. Mitchell,et al.  The potential of virtual reality in social skills training for people with autistic spectrum disorders. , 2002, Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR.

[18]  P. Sloper,et al.  Participation of Disabled Children in Individual Decisions about Their Lives and in Public Decisions about Service Development. , 2004 .

[19]  Sue Cobb,et al.  Participatory design approach with children with autism , 2011 .

[20]  Sarah Parsons,et al.  Sense of presence and atypical social judgments in immersive virtual environments , 2010, Autism : the international journal of research and practice.