In 2015 main part of the meeting was a chaired expert panel discussion. The multi-disciplinary panel responded to a few questions planned by the committee, followed by open comments from the floor.
The panellists were: Shannon Des Roches Rosa, Ofer Golan, Dan Smith and Oliver Wendt
In response to questions from the Chair and the floor, the panellists and audience identified the following key issues:
- Filtering: There is much too much tech out there and it is hard to find reliable, effective filters to identify what’s good quality.
- Snake oil: The probem of filtering is exacerbated by the fact that there are many poor quality technologies which aim to exploit the needs and vulnerabilities of the autism community without delivering real benefit
- False advertising: App developers may be offered the opportunity to be reviewed or to collect markers such as ‘Mom approved!” but these often come with a charge, and are therefore not independent, objective evaluations. In fact, it is not clear whether these so-called quality markers involve any genuine review process at all.
- Marketing: Researchers who work in this field value research evidence but this doesn’t necessarily translate into better sales, marketplace penetration or commercial support.
- Commercial pressures: the panel recommended partnership with business mentors, but recognised that their advice (e.g. never share a free version of your product) might conflict with the researcher / practitioner’s desire to provide real, accessible support to the community.
- Intellectual property: when putting together a new technology it is essential to think from the start about protecting your IP rights and registering a patent.
- Evidence: It remains unclear what constitutes evidence in the context of technological supports. While randomised controlled trials remain the gold standard it is not generally reasonable or practical to expect this level of evidence, especially from a commercially-developed app. Lack of RCT evidence doesn’t necessarily mean the app can’t deliver any benefit.
- Design: An overlooked aspect of technologies for autistic users is the design quality. A game intended to provide a learning or therapeutic support also needs to meet a high standard in design to be effective.
- Humanity: the world of technology support, like the world of autism intervention more generally, needs to remember that the autistic person requires support to be themselves, not to become someone else. Another overlooked aspect of the tech quality judgement process is what the technology is aiming to do. Technologies are rarely developed in partnership with autistic people and in direct response to their needs.
Suggestions from the SIG participants included:
- Investment by all SIG members in existing quality resources for reviewing and recommending technologies for autism. Examples include the Autism Speaks app list; reviews on the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism website, and app reviews on the DART site.
- Development of potential new routes to technology filering, such as requesting an Autism section on new website Psyberguide or developing technology review activities for undergraduate students (e.g. students learn about autism and technology through a review activity, and the finished review is then published online)
- Offering topical webinars and online live chats as a way to share training and continue discussions
- Creation of an (open access) journal on autism and technology and / or developing published conference proceedings from the IMFAR Tech Demo session
- Having a presence at the biennial ITASD conferences.
2015 Presentation slides