Autistic Children Access The Net With HP TouchSmart PCs

The folks at HP Middle East have donated several TouchSmart PCs to the Dubai Autism Centre. Using simple multi-touch gestures, such as rotating, flicking, pinching and pressing, these TouchSmart PCs give autistic children access to a host of applications. For example, with TouchSmart Canvas users can organise photos, while with TouchSmart Live TV users can pause and record online TV shows.

The TouchSmart computers let autistic children use PCs with far greater ease than a keyboard and mouse. Previously, schools such as the Hope Technology School in California have used TouchSmart PCs with their own assistive communication software. The school enabled autistic children to record their voices and then select clips, in order to construct sentences and play them back.

The new Touchsmart PCs are commercially available to buy too, and include the TouchSmart 600 PC and HP Pavilion DV3 with TouchSmart. Users with previous versions of HP’s autism support software will be able to update to the new TouchSmart 3.0 versions. Touchsmart 3.0 boasts not only new visuals and higher levels of personalisation, but also an improved interface.

Hewlett Packard’s donation to the Dubai Autism Centre is not the printing brand’s only charitable offering. In August 2008, Mccormick.Northwestern.Edu reported that HP donated 3 TouchSmart PCs to ArticuLab, the research group at a US university. ArticuLab helps autistic children improve their social skills with PC technology.