COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted daily routines, causing isolation and quarantine.Technology has emerged as a crucial tool for sustaining essential activities, but children with autism spectrum disorders have faced distinct challenges due to their intricate interaction with it.We employed an online survey to analyse the impact of technology use in online learning, remote assistance and daily life of children with autism along COVID-19, and we have identified benefits and challenges with assistive technology exposed by the pandemic.Findings are divided in (1) seven themes where COVID-19 impacted this population the most and their relationship with technology (remote communication, learning, emotional management, entertainment management, executive functions, activities of daily living, and physical activity and motor skills), and (2) a mapping of technological categories that define the working areas specifically aimed to cover the special needs of children with autism whenever face-to-face interactions are not possible (attention, authoring tools, calculation, e-learning, emotions, entertainment, experience of self, language and communication, memory, planning and time management, social networking, and social skills).These results help provide a more wellrounded knowledge of how to improve technology to make it accessible to autistic children, to handle and avoid services interruption in similar scenarios.

Digital technologies are an essential resource for maximizing education opportunities, yet the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed learning inequities, particularly among underrepresented groups such as children with autism. In this study, we have evaluated the quality of a distinctive dataset of multiplatform software applications, encompassing both assistive and mainstream software, first-hand acquired from special education professionals and families of children with autism. Through a heuristic evaluation based on a system indicators, and an in-depth analysis, we aimed to (1) assess the quality and effectiveness of assistive technologies in supporting the education of children with autism; (2) determine the adaptability of mainstream applications to the unique educational needs of children with autism; and (3) explore the features and constraints of applications targeting children with ASD, categorized according to the needs they cover. The resulting quality ranking, organized by cognitive domains, provides insights into the engagement and effectiveness of applications supporting the learning of children with autism. Furthermore, the findings delineating the functionalities and limitations of these applications contribute to the identification of necessary software engineering best practices. These practices align with user-centered design principles and drive the development of accessible software, thereby fostering high-quality inclusive education for children with autism.

Along the COVID-19 pandemic, people with autism spectrum disorders faced additional disadvantages and challenges for continuing with their learning and support therapies remotely. We have carried out research in several phases since the first wave of the pandemic, to obtain the global picture of the benefits and issues that come with online education and assistance for individuals on the spectrum.

The COVID-19 lockdown entailed changes at all levels. Particularly, closing schools and moving to online education from one day to another revealed limitations in the education system and difficulties to approach remote learning and assistance, particularly, in the case of special education needs. In order to collect how special education was orchestrated along the pandemic, what technologies were involved and the impact they had, we run a survey in which a total of 295 teachers, specialists and relatives of people with autism spectrum conditions participated. This paper contributes analyzing the orchestration of remote special education and provide applicable solutions to build a learning platform adapted to people with special needs, which covers the challenges encountered. In addition, a mapping of technologies is provided that can serve as an ICT selection criteria and benefit people on the spectrum.

Self-evaluation is the ability to assess one's work, and is a key element in the psycho-pedagogical development of children with special needs in their path towards autonomy and self-determination. Acquiring this skill requires explicit training and materials, and it is often cumbersome and time-consuming. In this paper we present a study to ascertain to what extent systems based on Augmented Reality (AR) are a suitable and less expensive alternative to help children with cognitive disabilities to train self-evaluation skills in special education schools. For this purpose, we have developed tablet application (BART) that offers assistance to children with special needs to self-evaluate basic arithmetic operations. The system was designed through the involvement of 2 educators, 2 experts on psycho-pedagogy, and 2 software designers. The contribution of this paper is the description of BART, an innovative system for children with special needs and a concrete plan for an empirical study that is to be carried out on a short-term basis. Here we describe the methodology that is to be applied to the proposed study and outline the main expectations about the results and their implications in the issue of self-evaluation skills acquisition for children in special education.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) show difficulties in reading skills acquisition with syllabic methods (used in ordinary schools). So that, specific learning methodologies are needed. Thanks to their good visual competences, global reading methods seem to be very useful. This paper presents a technology-driven serious game, based on global reading methodologies and personalized experience to promote children' first contact with literacy skills. This app is called "Leo con Lula" ("reading with Lula", in Spanish) and it is available on mobile platforms.

In this paper we present AssisT-Task, a mobile assistive application based on smartphones and QR Codes to help people with cognitive disabilities to do activities of the daily living. The system relies on dividing complex tasks into simpler steps, a strong visual support and adaptation to users' needs and contexts. As an example of use of the system, we describe a real world experience in uncontrolled settings in which AssisT-Task were used to teach one child how to wash his hands.

The fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), computer gaming and activities with digital technologies associated with the Maker movement are still dominated by a rather homogeneous group of (mostly white male) people though there are numerous initiatives and research attempting to change this. With this workshop we aim to bring together researchers, designers, educators and practitioners in IDC to share experience and explore how we can shape and create (learning) environments and tools to sustainably engage girls of diverse backgrounds and all ages in STEM, gaming and Making.

In this paper we present a serious game about collaborative storytelling in an effort to promote and give an outlet for empathy. It uses smartphones to provide cues and to visualize a story structure. This way, players will invent a story together. They have to play by turns, so this facilitates the empathic response inherent in both hearing and telling stories.

This article describes a proposal and case study based on mobile phones and QR Codes to assist individuals with cognitive disabilities in their labour training and integration. This proposal, named AssisT-Task, is a full functional mobile application for Android smartphones and offers step-by-step guidance, establishing a learning method through task sequencing. It has been tested with a group of 10 users and 2 types of labour tasks. Through 7 recorded sessions, we compared the performance and the learning progress with the tool against the traditional assisting method, based on paper instructions. The results show that people with cognitive disabilities learnt and performed better and faster when using AssisT-Task than the traditional method, particularly on tasks that require cognitive effort rather than manual skills. This learning has proved to be essential to obtain an adequate degree of personal autonomy for people with cognitive impairment.

This document introduces the GHIA research group, summarizes its main research areas regarding e-Learning systems and spot out some of its future work, exposing all this information within the context of the eMadrid network.