Using iPads and Mobile Technology for Children with Developmental Disabilities: Facilitating Language and Literacy Development

Background

In the brief interval since its introduction, the iPad has had a major impact in many educational and therapeutic situations including communication options for persons with complex communication needs (CCN) (Light & McNaugton, 2012; McNaughton & Light, 2013; RERC on Communication Enhancement, 2011), facilitating language development (Fernandez, 2011a), and literacy instruction for children who are typically developing and for children with disabilities (Beschoner & Hutchinson, 2013). The iPad is of course one of many mobile technologies that provide apps for education and communication. In addition to iPads there are numerous tablets available on the Android operating platform (Higginbotham & Jacobs, 2011) as well as a number of different smartphones that can also be used with apps albeit with a smaller display. However, due to the popularity of the iPad, this chapter focuses on the use of the iPad tablet as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch that were used to introduce many of the apps now used on the iPad. This approach is justifiable since there was much development with Apple-based apps before the introduction of the iPad (Fernandes, 2011b) and the fact that much research examining the use of mobile technologies for AAC has involved the iPod Touch (Achmadi et al., 2012; Kagohara et al., 2013; Kagohara et al., 2010; Kagohara et al., 2012). Additionally, the ideas developed in this chapter are easily adapted to similar devices produced by other manufacturers.