Yuudee AAC

Alternative communication tool for autistic children with minimal verbal skills

Yuudee, which means little rain drop in Chinese, is an augmentative and alternative communication tool for children who have difficulty in speech and can also be used as a teaching tool for parents and teachers to teach children cognitive skills. Children can press an icon and the App will “speak” out a short sentence or phrase that expresses a need, request, emotion, or answer. A built-in repository of 400 icons is available for users as a start. Parents and teachers can easily add to these resources and customize lessons catering to the specific needs of each child, with flexible and user-friendly customization supported by Yuudee.

Yuudee should be used together with educational methods such as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and Verbal Behavior (VB). Principles of Verbal behavior divides verbal operants into "demand", "imitation", "naming" and "interactive language", etc. Based on researches, "demand" is the most basic among all the verbal operants, and is the most common source to find motives. For instance, the motivations behind demands like "I want to eat", "I want to drink" are basic needs for food and water, and such demands usually lead to satisfaction, which is a good way to do training and stimulate verbal language. Almost half of the materials provided by Yuudee are of "demand".

Yuudee AAC is developed by Peking University School of Life Sciences; National Institute of Biological Sciences; Tsinghua University Academy of Arts and Design; Stars and Rain Autism Training Center; G-Wearables; Inway Design; AppChina.

Yuudee AAC English version is supported by UNICEF Global Innovation Center.