Special Education for Children with Special Needs
Problem: The wide spectrum of autism always had less research in learning theories than needed. The current shift increases the pressure on facilitators to overcome barriers and provide individual attention to kids with special needs. While the lockdown has created mental health issues, they are amplified even more in this segment because of the rapid transition to the digital medium. There aren’t suitably designed applications for children with disabilities. Some communication apps (AAC) were too expensive, and the games were very difficult for the children.
Solution: Artificial intelligence and machine learning can be of great help in this situation. AI not only provides highly customized learning for special children; it also learns from the responses to work on specific areas and improves them while considering the student’s learning speed and time. Ostino developed more than 50 games with educators and families and created a free open source AAC communication tool for nonverbal children in different languages. Ostimo uses AI for speech therapy applications. It is used to align the filters that come after the child has completed an exercise, and the filter comes up as part of the reward mechanism. Machine learning is used for voice recognition. That is how the app truly understands what the child is saying and then fills up the progress bar accordingly.