Interactive Systems Design Oriented to Children with Special Needs

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are changing many areas through the design of interactive systems. The purpose of this work is to use interactive systems to generate more meaningful experiences in children with special needs in their education or by improving their accessibility to a computer. We apply the user-centered design methodology to analyze aspects in the child and learn how to adapt these systems according to the children’s needs. Therefore, it is necessary the participation of a multidisciplinary team made up of professionals in special education, occupational therapy, educational technology, physiotherapy, ergonomics, and computer science, among others. We carried out interviews with the professionals of the institutes to know about the needs of the children. We present two case studies that were carried out with children with different disabilities: cerebral palsy (CP) and hearing impairment. Each case describes the difficulties that we faced and how the interactive system design supported areas such as health and education.

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