Compatible with iPhone
and iPod Touch
My Choice Board
Good Karma Applications has done it again. My Choice Board is a great iPhone app for children with autism. If you've used the First Then Visual Schedule, then this one will be very easy for you to catch on to because it's very similar in terms of how it functions. In fact, if First Then was a car, they put a new body and new suspension on it, changed the trim line and the paint job, but left the same engine under the hood and renamed it the My Choice Board. I think they were smart in doing so because when you have a winning product, hey, build on it.
My son has autism and he cannot answer many questions. Basically, he can only answer 'yes' or 'no' questions with a few exceptions. But I like to push the bounds so I routinely ask him, "Who did you see at school today?" He rarely produces a name. Usually he yells, "Noooooooo!" But I've taught him that, instead of throwing a fit of frustration, he can say, "Don't question me." or, "I don't know." My Choice Board allows me to ask that question and also show him possible answers. So, right away, the first board I designed contained choices for who he saw. I used pictures of people, so that when I ask him, "Who did you see today?" he can pick (and hopefully say) who he saw. This greatly eases his frustration at answering complex questions.
I also used My Choice Board to create boards that contained picture answers to questions such as, "Where do you want to go?" and, "What do you want to do?". This iPhone app is ideal for easing frustration of kids with autism. Think about it; My Choice Board transforms an open-ended question into a multiple choice question. In school I used to hate essay questions on exams. Didn't you prefer multiple choice too?
The design and artistry that went into this app is phenomenal! Due to that, the whole thing seems inviting and friendly.
But if you have an iPad don't purchase it. It won't install. That's the major drawback of My Choice Board. It has absolutely no support for the iPad, but a version for that device will be in the works before long. Apparently Apple is not approving that portion of the app's code that would make it universally compatible on all their devices. That's their way of encouraging developers to cough out an iPad only version.
A second shortcoming is that, when you touch a choice to blow it up full screen, the image is stretched and distorted. It'd be great if that was fixed because the iPhone and iPod Touch screen is pretty small and seeing a true full screen image would be nice. But, either way, My Choice Board hits a home run in my opinion. If you have a kid who has problems answering questions, give them visual choices - buy My Choice Board and start using it.
