HoloType: Lived Experience Based Communication Training for Nonspeaking Autistic People
Diwakar Krishnamurthy, Vikram K. Jaswal, Ahmadreza Nazari, Ali Shahidi, Pranav Subbaraman, Mea Wang
Abstract
The lived experiences of nonspeaking autistic people are typically not reflected in technology designed to support them. In this paper, we describe insights from nonspeaking autistic people who have learned to communicate by typing and those who support them. We leverage these within an augmented reality communication training prototype. The prototype provides an engaging, personalized learning environment in which a user can systematically develop their pointing skills. Pointing skills combined with elements of language such as spelling can in turn facilitate expressive written communication skills. We describe our requirements elicitation process and provide details about our initial implementation.