Year 2017
The design and evaluation of a tool, whether informatic or not, impacts its life cycle. IT tools are increasingly present on a daily basis. Specific audiences now benefit easily. But do these dedicated tools meet their expectations? Typically, it is customary to call on the end users themselves to respond. However, the latter, depending on their profiles, are not always able to respond. In the case of this study, we want to evaluate an application dedicated to a young audience with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders). This very specific audience encounters, among other things, difficulties in the field of communication. Many evaluation methods rely on verbal exchanges with the user. What role will children have with ASD in the evaluation phase of their tool? This audience benefits from constant support (family, medical and educational teams). Can these caregivers support the child in the evaluation process, and if so how?
This article proposes a state-of-the-art on communication support systems that can be used by users with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy. Today, many communication support systems are available on the market and/or presented in the literature.They include (1) virtual keyboards, (2) software using pictograms, (3) speech recognition, and (4) other types of input systems dedicated to physically disabled users (brain-computer interface and physical aids). After the description of these four categories of communication support systems, this article ends with a synthesis in which our view of each category of system in relation to the considered user profile is provided.