Er­line An­drews

If es­ti­mates are true, there are thou­sands of peo­ple with autism in this coun­try. But on­ly a few hun­dred are be­ing treat­ed.

The old­est or­gan­i­sa­tion in T&T de­vot­ed to help­ing peo­ple with autism–which af­fects a per­son's abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate and process in­for­ma­tion–serves on­ly 80 clients a week and can give each just a small frac­tion of the amount of ther­a­py they need. Do­na­tions help the Autis­tic So­ci­ety, an NGO, main­tain head­quar­ters built out of four ship­ping con­tain­ers in D'Abadie and pay mod­est salaries to a small staff.

With­in re­cent years some com­mon­place tech­nol­o­gy has been mak­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion's job a lit­tle eas­i­er.

The tablet com­put­er, in par­tic­u­lar the iPad, is work­ing won­ders in the treat­ment of autism, ac­cord­ing to re­ports com­ing out of the US over the last few years. Par­ents and teach­ers in T&T are slow­ly be­ing ex­posed to the tablet's ben­e­fits.

"It's very at­trac­tive. You're see­ing ac­tion right away. It's much bet­ter than if you take a piece of pa­per and try to teach them some­thing," said Teresina Sie­u­nar­ine, pres­i­dent of the Autis­tic So­ci­ety, about the ap­peal of the iPad.

"Even a com­put­er screen is not as ef­fec­tive as the iPad, which they could move about with," she said.

The so­ci­ety cur­rent­ly has five iPads, do­nat­ed to them by multi­na­tion­al gam­ing com­pa­ny GTech, which pro­vides the tech­nol­o­gy for all of Trinidad & To­ba­go's lot­tery games and some of the coun­try's cell phone top up ser­vices.

GTech–which seeks to help or­gan­i­sa­tions that sup­port spe­cial-needs chil­dren as part of their so­cial out­reach ef­forts in T&T– has done more than just do­nate.

They've pro­vid­ed apps and on­go­ing tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance from their IT team. They linked the Autis­tic So­ci­ety up with US autism spe­cial­ist Ja­son Back­es, who's vis­it­ed T&T three times in aid of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­clud­ing March last year, when he con­duct­ed a work­shop on us­ing the iPad to treat autism.

"Tech­nol­o­gy is what we do. That's our strong­hold. That goes to the very heart of our core busi­ness," said Ann-Dawn Young Sang, GTech's vice-pres­i­dent for the Caribbean re­gion, ex­plain­ing the com­pa­ny's use of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy as part of their Af­ter School Ad­van­tage Pro­gramme, found­ed in 1999 to help chil­dren and teens at GTech lo­ca­tions around the world.

"Chil­dren with autism have to learn a lot of those things that come nat­u­ral­ly to oth­er peo­ple," she said.

In an anony­mous tes­ti­mo­ni­al pro­vid­ed by the Autis­tic So­ci­ety, one lo­cal moth­er re­lat­ed how her non-ver­bal son had not been in­ter­est­ed in print­ed im­ages but then be­came "ad­dict­ed" to the iPad, us­ing down­loaded im­ages to com­mu­ni­cate mes­sages, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial­ly life-sav­ing ones like "sick."

"The iPad has changed my son's life," said the moth­er.

GTech has do­nat­ed tablets, com­put­ers, soft­ware, apps and the nec­es­sary sup­port to oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions help­ing chil­dren with dif­fer­ent kinds of spe­cial needs.

One of them is Caribbean Kids and Fam­i­lies Ther­a­py Or­gan­i­sa­tion, where phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled chil­dren have im­proved the mus­cle strength in their arms and fin­gers by us­ing tablets, which en­cour­age in­ter­ac­tion through fun games and learn­ing tools.

"The touch screen and lay­out make these tablets more ac­ces­si­ble for chil­dren with co-or­di­na­tion or learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties; these chil­dren find slid­ing and tap­ping eas­i­er than ei­ther typ­ing or writ­ing," said Caribbean Kids gen­er­al man­ag­er Krista Hamel-Smith.

Young Sang said such in­ter­ven­tions can have long-term im­pact on peo­ple with spe­cial needs.

(she­knows.com)

Su­per Duper "Un­der­stand­ing In­fer­ences"

This app is rat­ed as great for mak­ing "smart guess­es" for in­fer­enc­ing and for rea­son­ing skills.

Price: US$3

Con­ver­sa­tion­Builder

Re­view­ers say this app is in­cred­i­bly help­ful for high-func­tion­ing autis­tic chil­dren who are work­ing on iden­ti­fy­ing and con­struct­ing ap­pro­pri­ate con­ver­sa­tions.

Price: US$20

Su­per Duper "What Are They Think­ing?"

Ther­a­pists have found it ex­cel­lent for syn­tac­tic, se­man­tic and so­cial lan­guage de­vel­op­ment. This fun app aims to im­prove your child's in­fer­enc­ing, rea­son­ing and con­ver­sa­tion­al skills.

Price: US$2

For more in­for­ma­tion about the Autism So­ci­ety of T&T vis­it their site at autismtt.org or check their Face­book page at

face­book.com/groups/554208357946958/