April Autism Awareness Month: Dillan’s Story

Imagine not being able to communicate with the world around you, how scared, frustrated you would feel. When people only see you as someone who has no control and not interested in what they have to say. The truth is you do have something to say, you do listen, you are interested but people don’t understand there is a voice within that wants to communicate with them.

April is Autism Awareness Month, According to Aspect Autism Australia an estimated one in 100 people has autism; that’s almost 230,000 Australians. Autism affects almost four times as many boys than girls. This blog post is to share Dillan’s story and show you how iPad and apps have given Dillan and many others with autism a voice.

Dillan has autism and is non-verbal; communicating his thoughts and feelings has been greatly improved by the help of iPad and apps. Listen to Dillan’s voice below:

Since Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, Apple has heard from many parents, children, adults and therapists that iPad has been a key communication tool for Autistic people. For Dillan in his own words ‘changed everything in my life’.

Watch the next video below- Dillan’s Path, this video shares an insight from Dillan’s mum and teacher

The App store has more than 1.5 million apps and 850,000 native to iPad, navigating to find what you need or to discover new apps has been made simple by Apple. The App Store has the “Voices of Autism” collection, as well as iBooks and podcasts, which include some great apps like Proloquo2Go which help non-verbal children and adults communicate.

iPad is intuitive by design, and addition to a range of built-in iOS accessibility features, Guided Access is particularly useful for helping people stay focused on learning. This month we will be sharing more of these accessibility tools

Read our Autism Awareness Education Resources blog post

Apps that have given Dillan a voice:

Proloquo4Text (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Apple Watch) (AAC App)

Text‑based communication AAC app (Augmentative Alternative Communication) that gives a voice to people who cannot speak. It offers a customisable single screen layout for easy conversation, free natural-sounding voices in 18 languages, word and sentence prediction, social media sharing, and more.

Assistive Express (iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch) (AAC App)

Assistive Express is designed to be simple and efficient, allowing users to express their views and thoughts at the most express manner, with natural sounding voices. It provides word predicting to minimize keystrokes required for users, and features a favorites list to quickly access users’ most-used phrases.

Keeble (iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch)

Keeble is an accessible keyboard for iOS. Keeble allows students and adults with physical or vision impairments to type in any app, and offers many customization options.

April is Autism Acceptance Month, dedicated to people like Dillan, whose words remind us that everyone should have a voice and be heard/accepted.