Apps You Can Use (Lessons from SXSW)

It’s almost two weeks since I returned from attending the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. It’s a conference I’ve attended for at least seven years but I’m starting to lose track. I always find inspiration from the event for my job and for Born Just Right. Two years ago, my friends Kate Canterbury and Robert Rummel-Hudson spoke on a panel together where we asked the tech community to think about ways to break down the tech-based silos of special needs.

This year, Robert spoke on a panel about adaptive and assistive apps for autism and other special needs. Robert’s daughter, Schuyler, was born with a brain malformation that makes it very difficult for her to speak without assistive devices or apps. Although, after I finally got to meet her, I understood some of her words and I thought that was super cool. What was even cooler was Schuyler giving the room a chance to see how she uses her adaptive speech device.

I also had a bit of an epiphany in the room. While I spend so much time researching and making sure I know everything about prosthetics for Jordan, I realized there may be adaptive and assistive tools that can help both of my kids better focus and attend to the work they need to do at school. I learned there are some people who have the job to assess a child or adult’s special needs and find the best apps that can help. If you don’t have access to someone like that, you can visit a website called Bridging Apps where you can identify apps that might meet the needs of your kids or even adults who can benefit. While doing follow up research on the session, I also discovered another great site called appoLearning.

I started to dig into the site and I had no idea how many apps are out there that can help so many different needs. I highly recommend checking it out. I put together a collection of tweets and links shared during the session, feel free to check it out.