Case 3 – Samantha

"It's the first thing we have enjoyed together with Sammy as a family."

Samantha has Kanner Syndrome, also known as autism.

Autism is a developmental disability which affects the way in which a person relates to the people around them. This leads to problems with everyday interaction with the people in their lives and often an inability to form relationships with others. A person with autism can also have problems with communication such as problems understanding the subtleties conveyed by facial gestures or tone of voice.

They can also have limited imagination, leading to problems with interpersonal play as a child, and any they do have may well be copied and repeated rigidly. The needs of children and adults within the autistic spectrum can vary dramatically. Some can have learning disabilities linked into their autism, some function in line with their peers, and some who are very high functioning can have Asperger's syndrome, a specific form of autism.

"Reality to an autistic person is a confusing, interacting mass of events, people, places, sounds and sights. There seems to be no clear boundaries, order or meaning to anything. A large part of my life is spent just trying to work out the pattern behind everything."

Samantha is a 'typical' child with autism. She does not converse well and tends to be very shy around people she does not know. Though aged 10, her reading is similar to that of a 5/6 year old and she has very low comprehension.

Samantha is in a Mainstream primary school, where she has a Statement of Educational Needs and one-on-one support with a learning support assistant. The school does not have any specialist IT equipment for her to use, and she is unable to use a mouse due to cognitive issues with hand-eye coordination.

This was leading to Samantha being quite frustrated as she wanted to access software she saw her peers using, but was unable to.

Samantha has a photographic memory, and a love of Tom and Jerry. She loves watching their videos, and often mimics the voices and scenes she loves. Watching videos is one of the few things that would keep Samantha occupied and happy. One of the things Samantha wanted was pictures of the characters.

At the point we got involved with Samantha, her parents had a very old, slow computer. Her mother had developed a method of taking pictures from the TV showing videos of Tom and Jerry and other cartoons loved by Samantha. These pictures were then printed so that Samantha could have images of the characters.
This process was very difficult to get right as the image Samantha wanted could be on the screen for less than 1 second, and when paused, the screen would flicker. The result was that Samantha's mother had to re-run the section of video over and over again until the right picture could be obtained.

The Assessment

Before going to meet Samantha, we spoke to her parents and her school. Her parents thought that a touchscreen would probably be the best solution for Samantha.

On speaking to the school, it became apparent that Samantha was using a special needs roller ball, but with limited success, and so we decided to assess her with one of these as well, combined with Windows settings to slow it down for her to assist targeting.

At the assessment it quickly became apparent that the roller ball was not right for Samantha - though she liked the ball, she still had similar conceptual issues as with a mouse, and had great difficulty connecting the concepts of moving the ball and the arrow moving.

The touch screen, on the other hand, proved to be an instant success, with Samantha very quickly grasping the idea that she could touch something on the screen and something would happen.

We also provided Samantha with a piece of software called Fuzz Buzz, a simple literacy game which was quite accessible with the touch screen.

The Result

Samantha's parents were amazed by the instant rapport which she had with the computer. She loves to spend lots of time sitting using it – other than videos this is the only thing she does this with.

Since receiving the computer, Samantha and her family's lives have changed. The computer is situated in her bedroom so she is able to use it in privacy. She only uses it with her mother or father as she likes their company and support, but it is it also something she sees as exclusively hers – very important for a person with autism.

Samantha's mother, after taking some advice from Aidis, has also bought a video capture card to put in the computer. This enables her to record sections of video into the computer and then scan through them frame by frame to select a picture for Samantha to print. This has enabled her to stop the frustrating system of trying to photograph a moving image on a TV screen, though the quality and ease with which photos can be produced has led to a large increase in their ink cartridge buying!!!

Samantha's Parents run the Carmarthenshire branch of the National Autism Society, and had the following to say about Aidis' service:

"There are few people or organisations that we have dealt with who have the insight that you have in dealing with autism and autism specific needs."