Designing an app for teaching music to children with autism: a preliminary study

Autism is a developmental disorder which has been growing more and more common worldwide during the latest years.According to recent research, autism affects about 1 in 54 children in the US and 1 in 89 children aged 7-9 years in Europe.In this scenario, including autistic students in primary and secondary schools has become an important challenge for both teachers and parents.Music classes have been proved to be a valid means to improve communication and social skills in children with autism,provided that lessons are tailored on the specific needs of each student.In this paper we discuss the principles behind and the challenges posed by the design and development of a mobile application whose goal isto support inclusive music teaching to children with autism.Functional requirements will be described and justified as well as the technical choices we adopted.Finally, we will describe the first prototype of the application and discuss further improvements.