GAIA : uma proposta de guia de recomendações de acessibilidade web com foco em aspectos do autismo
Abstract
In the past 20 years, computer solutions has been used as a support tool for children with
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as well for their parents, therapists and educators. Those
solutions may be helpful to work social skill, memorizing, communication, vocabulary
acquisition, literacy, and other aspects. However, there is lack of artifacts to guide software
designers to plan and implement computer solutions suitable to the needs of children with
ASD. The literature provide some considerations regarding this factor, but many of them
are understandable only for education or computer professionals exclusively. Besides,
many contributions may have a restrict access due to paywalls. Those factors motivated
the development of GAIA (Guidelines for Accessible Interfaces for people with Autism), a
set of 28 guidelines intend to help software developers and digital educators to better
understand how to develop website that are suitable to the needs of children with Autism.
To develop GAIA, this research was conducted in three stages: a) exploratory bibliographic
survey, which generated the first version of the guidelines of GAIA; b) Application of an
online survey to map the knowledge of web developers regarding cognitive, neuronal or
learning disabilities, in order to understand their gap of knowledge; c) interviews with
parents of children with ASD to understand empathically the social, therapeutic and
pedagogic value of the technology for children with ASD. Triangulating the data from the
three stages, it was possible to get the following conclusions: (i) developers have difficult
in understanding the existing materials about web accessibility and also have a lack of
knowledge about cognitive disabilities; (ii) the interviews made possible to understand in
depth the context of use of the technology by children with ASD; (iii) there were recurring
interaction aspects in the interviews that were not found in the literature. With those results,
it was possible to refine the guidelines of GAIA e make them available through a website
hosted in an open-source repository, so they can be easily accessible by people.