Auticiel, the Orange Foundation and UNAPEI launch applications-autisme.com

Applications-Autisme.com is a collaborative platform for sharing and exchanging ideas, enabling carers and parents of people with autism to find the right applications to help them learn.

Thanks to the involvement of medical and social professionals and families, Applications-Autisme.com now lists almost 100 relevant applications.

Autism currently affects 600,000 people in France. This disability is characterized by impaired social interaction, communication and language disorders, and repetitive behaviors. The use of digital applications, easy to handle by people with autism spectrum disorders, helps develop autonomy, promotes the acquisition of skills (motor and social) and facilitates learning.

Among the thousands of applications available in the education section of the “stores”, parents and professionals need guidance in selecting useful applications that are adapted to the person with autism they are supporting.

In response, Applications-Autisme.com intelligently references applications adapted to the needs and abilities of people with autism, according to the learning domain and skills required to use them. Designed with the help of professionals and parents, the classification of applications is structured around eight learning domains and twelve skills, in order to arrive at common and unprecedented criteria.

This site is above all collaborative: each caregiver can reference new applications, add comments and give an application a rating. It capitalizes on feedback from the user community. Today, almost 100 relevant applications have already been tested and classified.

The project was born of a simple observation: mobile applications help people with autism to learn.

But how do you find applications tailored to the specific needs of each individual? This is how the Applications-Autism project came about.

The aim was to propose a tool for simple, relevant classification. To create Applications-Autisme.com, Auticiel, a startup that develops software and mobile applications for people with cognitive impairments, and autism in particular, has contributed its know-how in developing solutions, as well as a database of applications already identified as useful by parents and professionals.

This project would not have been possible without the Orange Foundation, which is financing the development of the site and the equipment of the beta-testers as part of its action to promote the use of new technologies in the treatment of autism, and Unapei, the leading French federation of associations representing and defending the interests of mentally handicapped people and their families, which has mobilized parents and professionals to test the platform and reference applications. A fine example of fruitful collaboration between a startup, a corporate foundation and a federation of parent associations!