Regresar

Intervention Platform for Children with Intellectual Disability: Chatbots and IBM Watson Services in the Ecuadorian Context

Abstract:

Some of the latest studies conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) claim that approximately 10 percent of the world’s children and young people (200 million) have a sensory, intellectual, or mental health impairment. This situation is complex because 80% of them live in developing countries. In Ecuador, the picture has become critical with the health emergency due to the COVID-19. In the same way, it is essential mentioning that children with disabilities are much more vulnerable to COVID-19. For these reasons, in this paper, we present the first development stage of an open-source platform to help specialists in the intervention of children with intellectual disabilities. The platform uses chatbots to support and provide an appropriate guide for children’s parents/caregivers, and at the same time uses the free intelligent services provided by the IBM Watson. To determine the real feasibility of implementing we tested the platform with real users, their parents, and at the same time, applied a survey with 30 professionals of special education. The achieved results are encouraging and show that the platform can be used by therapists and professionals that lost their works due to the pandemic.