Tutorials-Based System to Assist Qatari Children with Special Needs

Abstract

The objective of this project is to develop an Arabic predictive communication system for physically disabled people with speech and language impairments who are resident at the Shafalah Qatari center for children with special needs in Doha. We aim to improve the learning and understanding skills of children with special needs. We aim to develop graphics-based and interactive tutorials. The main topics of these tutorials include: human body, transportation means, time and date, animals, food and plants. We design some intelligent puzzles to be assembled by the disabled children. Greedy algorithms will used to guide the potential users to reach a solution. The disabled children will be asked to arrange a set of simple words and phrases to form a meaningful sentence on the tutorials' topics that they learnt. The existing augmentative systems for disabled children are solely designated for western children (design, interface and contents). Thus the development of an Arabic augmentative communication system taking into consideration the culture and specificity of Qatari disabled children will be an important tool that helps them to overcome communication problems and access independently digital information.