Mobile Support For Adults With Mild Learning Disabilities During Clinical Consultations

Previous studies have suggested that the learning disability (LD) population face significant communication barriers when interacting with health professionals. Such obstacles may be considered as preventable; however, there is a surprising lack of research-based technologies available that intend to promote this communication. We aim to address this issue by investigating the potential use of mobile technologies to support adults with mild LDs during clinical consultations. To achieve this, we interviewed 10 domain experts including government advisors, academics, support workers and General Practitioners. The extracted information was used to develop an initial technology probe, which was evaluated by a subset of the aforementioned experts. The overall contribution of this research is a set of design guidelines for the development of Augmentative and Communicative technologies that target the clinical needs of adults with mild LDs.