12-yr-old develops App for autistic kids

Aryan Debnath is just 12 years old but his zeal to fight the odds and to offer solution to towering problems is what makes him special. Rather than giving in to despair while struggling with autism since the age of three this Class VII student of The Heritage School, Gurgaon, was motivated to make life easier for other kids like him. He had delayed speech issues and communication problems. In spite of his high intellectual level, he struggled a lot to get an equal opportunity to learn and explore.

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In autism, children can’t predict their daily schedule well and often undergo lots of anxiety which triggers meltdowns. Communicating their daily needs and emotions are the two biggest challenges to them. Aryan has developed an app — Companion — to help such students keep track of their daily schedule. He shares his journey with School Tribune in an interaction. Excerpts

What is the app about? How will it help autistic kids?

Companion is an app to resolve the daily problems of children under autism spectrum disorder. It has a built-in daily schedule with most of the common daily activities children need to do. It also has a customised feature to incorporate new activities as per the child’s need. Children can communicate their basic needs and emotions as well through this app.

This app is also equipped with a safety feature to protect the child from bullying and from any danger. It has the location feature as well, if the child gets lost, he will be able to share his location with the parents or caregivers.

What difficulty did you face in implementing you idea?

As I was very clear about my goal, I was confident enough to develop this app. It involved lots of hard work and many sleepless nights to achieve it but I got wholehearted support from my teacher and mentor of Whitehat Jr to develop this app.

How will this app be made available to other kids?

At present this app is available in the Google play store, and anyone can download and use it. We are in the process to upload the same to the Apple App store also. “I am working on improvising the app, so after that, we may consider collaborations”, says Aryan.

What are your hobbies?

Apart from coding, I love music a lot. I want to develop many more apps addressing different issues to resolve the challenges of kids with special needs and want to become the best coder with a dedication to mankind.

Future plans

I see a career in coding and as regards to Companion app, I am still working on improvising the app by adding some more features and functionality.