What is Developmental Disorders

This chapter presents a mobile application to support children and students with hearing difficulties and/or developmental disorders in interacting, understanding, and preparing for learning in their daily, school, and social lives. The authors think that a learning and communication support technique using a combination of characters, pictograms, and photographs is effective for people with disabilities. The application recognizes words spoken by their communication partners by using a speech recognition system and arranges the pictures corresponding to the words in a sequence. The results of two demonstration experiments show that PICTONGUE promotes mutual understanding between students who have hearing difficulties and/or developmental disorders by utilizing pictograms and photographs in combination with speech. The authors suggest that PICTONGUE supports visualization and feedback for planning and learning as a new way of communication for children and students with hearing difficulties and developmental disorders.