Free statement of participation on completion of these courses.
Badge icon
Earn a free Open University digital badge if you complete this course, to display and share your achievement.
Create your free OpenLearn profile
Anyone can learn for free on OpenLearn, but signing-up will give you access to your personal learning profile and record of achievements that you earn while you study.
Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.
There is rapid growth in assistive technology, the use of technology, and especially IT, to help autistic people. This is a massive field, of which only a brief summary can be given here. Smartphones, tablets and computers have all been harnessed to help autistic people deal with problems of daily living, learn social and communicative skills, and in other ways. One important strand is the development of smartphone ‘apps’ designed to help autistic people with daily living skills. For instance, an able young person may become anxious and confused if the bus they always catch to school is late or fails to come. A smartphone app could offer practical actions for such a situation, for example: wait 20 minutes and then call parents at home; check the bus timetable for other possible buses. In video modelling a child or adult learns a new behaviour, such as how to greet a friend, by watching it being modelled by someone on a computer screen. Some more traditional approaches, such as the visual schedule shown in Fig. 1, are now available in computerised versions. Finally, researchers have started investigating the use of robots to teach new skills, on the view that robots provide a particularly accessible medium for an autistic person to learn from. You will find more information about these approaches on the Research Autism website [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .
Making the decision to study can be a big step, which is why you'll want a trusted University.
The Open University has 50 years’ experience delivering flexible learning and 170,000 students are studying with us right now.
Take a look at all Open University courses.
If you are new to University-level study,
we offer two introductory routes to our qualifications. You could either choose to start with an
Access module, or a module which allows you to count your previous learning towards an Open University qualification. Read our guide on
Where to take your learning next for more information.