Predictive typing firm SwiftKey has launched a smartphone app that aims to provide special needs children with an easier way to communicate.
SwiftKey Symbols is described as an assistive symbol-based communication app specially designed for children with autism and other learning difficulties. It can be used by other nonverbal individuals as well. The company’s contextual language prediction technology allows users to communicate with others by selecting images from various categories in order to create sentences.
Children with autism may face difficulties developing language skills and communicating effectively with others. Technological innovations such as this app help to remove communication barriers for special needs children by opening up opportunities for them to express themselves. SwiftKey Symbols includes an audio playback feature where a formed sentence is read aloud for children with verbal impairments. It also allows users to customize the app by adding their own categories and images.
The app gradually adapts to the user through its predictive sentence completion feature. SwiftKey technology suggests symbols based on factors such as time and day. For example, if the user has art lessons on Wednesday afternoons, the icons previously selected at that time will appear.
SwiftKey shared in a blog post that the inspiration for the new app came from the company’s employees whose nonverbal family members have autism. “We wanted to bring an accessible, free app to people with talking and learning difficulties so that they could communicate more easily with their friends and family,” wrote product manager Ryan Barnes.
The app is available for free download on Android devices.