A usability study on natural interaction devices with ASD children

Intelligent agents such as social robots and avatars have been used with Children with Autism (CWA) to help them learn social skills. Social robots afford a natural interaction but are expensive. Interaction with avatars, on the other hand, is through point-and-click interfaces and touch-screens. In this paper, we explore the use of Microsoft KinectTMas an interaction modality with children with autism. We found that while CWA could understand the concept of interacting through gestures, though they needed explicit physical modeling from their teachers to perform those gestures. We discuss the implications of this to user-interface design.