Let us look at spastic kids, who are usually diagnosed when they are very small. Many of them could attend normal school, if their motor disabilities would let them write and speak. Particularly in countries where special education is scarce, computers with special software such as my eLocutor (http://holisticit.com/eLocutor/elocutorv3.htm) could allow them to attend normal school. What happens today is that they compound their disability with illiteracy.

Let us also look at the case of autistic kids, for whom communication problems are serious, and computers are known to help in many cases. I’ve just started to work on this, see http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/Workshops/Computing_for_Autistic_Kids

In these cases, everyone should agree with you, that we need to “find some way to get her to spend 20+ hours a week between the age of 6-14 yrs old interacting with a computer that is designed for her age group and that encourages and rewards exploration and intellectual curiosity.”

Question is, how do we design software that works for, and appeals to, kids who do not know how to read and write — indeed might use the software to learn how to read and write. Some thought devoted to this would be highly appreciated.

Arun Mehta

Sorry for taking so long to accept this post. Lots of spam recently and I was in transit.

Thanks for the note. I will ping you if I find anything else on the topic or if I do any more exploration of it myself.