‘AREAL-VOCAB’ : THE NEW À LA MODE OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY LEARNING FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurological disorder due to which diagnosed child may face difficulty in social communication or have a repeated or restricted set of behaviours. Learners with autism are mostly visual strategy learners and they tend to learn better through pictures and images. Due to their cognitive disabilities, most learners with autism struggle to acquire new vocabulary and the use of technology has been making its waves since 2012 and no longer a stranger to the Autism education world. Hence, this innovation involves the use of augmented reality technology in developing a mobile augmented reality application named ‘AReal-Vocab’ to help learners with autism with their English vocabulary learning process. The developed mobile augmented reality application is employed to two autism learner aged 7 to 10 years old to discover their acceptance towards the developed mobile application. Based on the findings, it can be seen that AReal-Vocab can act as an assistive technology for autism learners to learn English vocabulary in a more interesting yet meaningful manner and at the same time spark their interest in their English vocabulary language learning process.