Giulio E. Lancioni, Mark F. O’Reilly, Jeff Sigafoos, Francesca Campodonico, Viviana Perilli, Gloria Alberti, Carlo Ricci, Orazio Miglino
Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2017
ABSTRACT
This study evaluated a new smartphone-based program to support independent leisure and communication activities in five participants with mild to moderate intellectual disability, visual and/or motor impairments, and poor speech. The new program relied on the use of two Samsung Galaxy A3 smartphone devices with Android 5.1 operating system. The participants placed mini objects or pictures fitted with special frequency code labels on one of the two smartphones to make their activity requests. This smartphone was able to read the labels and verbalize the related requests. Such verbalizations (a) triggered the S-voice of the second smartphone and (b) opened the corresponding leisure activity files or telephone contacts for the participants. All participants learned to use the new program. Their mean cumulative percentages of session time spent engaging with independently accessed leisure and communication activities ranged from about 80 to about 90 with the program while being zero without the program. These results indicate that the new smartphone-based program may be an effective resource for people with multiple disabilities.
