CHENNAI: The home screen of the Arumbu Mozhi app opens to six picture tiles. From that of a kid eating dosai to listening to music on headphones, the pictures represent some of the most basic, everyday activities. One tap on the dosai-eating-kid picture and you hear the audio ‘Pasikkuthu, enakku dosai venum’. A picture of a toilet chirps the request ‘Bathroom poganum’. And so it goes with every picture. As simple as it seems, this little piece of technology is helping hundreds of kids with autism find words to communicate.
The origin story
This is all thanks to Yes Balabharathi, author and autism advocate, and his wife Lakshmi Balakrishnan, special educator and freelance writer. Being parents of an autistic teenager, the couple has years of experience in advocacy and awareness initiatives around autism. So, they were no strangers to the fact that many a behavioural problem with autistic children stems from their inability to communicate their needs, wishes and wants. But this was made all the more apparent to them after Lakshmi finished her training to be a special educator. “The complaint against many autistic children is that they are rude, get angry often, and such. Lakshmi pointed out that this was because they do not have a language for communication. Not all of them are good at sign language either; it depends on what level they are. My son cannot say thanni venum but he knows to say thanni. Then, we get to asking questions — you want water to drink? Want to play in water? Do you want to bathe? — to arrive at what he’s trying to say. But not all kids can do the same. Hence, they resort to screaming and crying. So, we considered creating an app for such kids,” he recounts, explaining the genesis of the project.
The existing apps came with a whole host of challenges and restrictions. For one, they are quite expensive. Many need a device along with it, which would have a cost of its own. Naturally, not everyone can afford to buy these. While some special schools do manage to get these as teaching tools, thanks to sponsors, they encounter the next problem — the apps are only available in English. “Language is an important element of communication. When these apps only come in English, it makes it difficult. Besides, the mode of communication in most of these apps is through individual words and putting them in order. If a kid wants water, he has to touch the tile representing ‘I’, ‘want’, ‘water’ and finally hit ‘play’ for him to covey ‘I want water’. I found this complicated and started looking for a simpler solution,” he says.
As simple as it gets
To help the child communicate with a single touch, Bala took his drawing board samples to a software engineer friend, S Tamil Chelvan, and his firm, and together they managed to whip up Arumbu Mozhi. The app allows users to create a library of pictures and add voice recordings of statements, questions, requests or demands to each. A child with autism would be able to use these pictures to communicate what they want or respond to a query or even learn new words. While the app comes with six basic picture representations (eating, drinking water, sleeping, going to the toilet, listening to music, and walking), the user can add up to 100 images to their profile. Given that the user will be the one adding the voice recording to each picture, they have the freedom to do it in a language they prefer. The simple tools and customisation option has received good response from its users.
Praveena Carmel, director of The Dolphin Special School, Tiruchy, says that they have been using the app as an educational tool to great success. Her school was part of the app’s initial trial run and she has been a fan ever since. “Even for kids who have speech disorder, this has helped enhance their communication. Since using the app, all the kids have developed an interest in communication while earlier they had only relied on the teacher or a parent to speak for them. The more they use the app, the more they are able to learn and use words. That we can make the recordings (in the app) in the voice of the person the child is very familiar with and cooperative with, is a big advantage. This offers an emotional connect, a psychological bond,” she says. Naturally, that this app is free and can be used on multiple devices makes it even more suitable for their needs, she adds.
Many a gain
While the app was developed for aiding the communication needs of autistic children, it seems to offer the same benefits to unexpected candidates too, finds Bala. “A nearly nonverbal mentally-disabled child showed such change in behaviour — from being a constantly angry boy — after using this app, because he was able to tell his parents what he wants. An elderly man who was rendered speechless and bed-bound after a stroke also found this app to be useful. Hearing such testimonies has been satisfying,” he shares.
While the app was released just before the pandemic, plans for its update have been on hold due to lack of adequate financial support. But, Bala does hope to be able to make the app available for iOS soon; a feature to rearrange (drag and drop) the picture tiles based on the frequency of use is another aspect he would like to introduce. All in good time, he says.