SEOUL, May 18 (AJP) - South Korea's leading science and technology institute, KAIST, has joined hands with Naver Cloud AI Lab to develop a smartphone application designed to help children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) communicate more effectively with their parents.
KAIST announced on Sunday that the newly developed app, called “AAcess Talk,” was created through a collaboration between its research team and the artificial intelligence lab under Naver, the country’s largest web portal operator.
ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. Some individuals with ASD experience difficulty in verbal communication, and a small number show signs of minimally verbal autism (MVA), making it difficult for them to express their thoughts through speech.
Children with ASD often rely on illustrated word cards to communicate with their parents. However, these cards often fall short of conveying the child’s emotions or real-time interests, limiting the depth of interaction.
To address this issue, the KAIST team developed an AI-based system that operates on tablet PCs and suggests appropriate communication cards in real time. The app allows children to initiate and end conversations and even ask their parents for opinions, offering a more dynamic and personalized form of interaction.
“Creating an environment where children can express their own voices is the most important thing,” said Professor Hong Hwa-jung, who led the KAIST research team. “We will continue to develop UX-based technologies and practical tools to support social minorities.”
The research was recently honored with a Best Paper Award at the ACM CHI 2025, a leading conference on human-computer interaction held in Yokohama, Japan.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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