ASC Inclusion Project

On April 2, international attention is drawn to autism; a condition that is common, yet often misunderstood.

Autism is a complex disorder that affects the brain. It impairs an individual’s social and communication abilities and often causes them to display unusual or repetitive behaviours.

Autism is quite common – approximately 1 in 150 people are diagnosed with it. Despite the high prevalence of autism, these people experience many barriers in everyday life, including lack of access to accurate diagnosis, appropriate therapies, education, employment and social inclusion. This is why World Autism Awareness Day was declared by the United Nations General Assembly six years ago as an annual day to draw attention to the urgent needs of people with autism around the world.

Around the world, a huge range of events and activities are held to raise awareness of autism on this day and buildings are lit up in blue at night as part of the ‘Light It Up Blue’ initiative.

Find out more:

About autism

Events and activities throughout Europe

‘Light It Up Blue’ initiative

UN Secretary-General’s message for World Autism Awareness Day 2013

The 1st International Workshop on Intelligent Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion (IDGEI 2013) will be held during the Foundations of Digital Games 2013 Full Day Workshop 14 May 2013, Chania, Crete, Greece. “Uniting Game Developers, Domain Experts, and Technology Providers”.

Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion possess the potential to change our society in a most positive way by preparing selected groups in a playful and fun way for their everyday life’s social and special situations. Exemplary domains span as far as from children with Autism Spectrum Condition to young adults preparing for their first job interviews or migrants familiarizing with their new environment. The current generation of such games thereby increasingly demands for computational intelligence algorithms to help analyze players’ behavior and monitor their motivation and interest to adapt game progress. The development of such games usually thus requires expertise from the general gaming domain, but in particular also from a game’s target domain, besides technological savoir-faire to provide intelligent analysis and reaction solutions. IDGEI 2013 aims at bridging across these communities and disciplines by inviting respective researchers and experts to discuss their latest perspectives and findings in the field of Intelligent Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion. Read more …

The International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) is an annual scientific meeting, convened each spring, to exchange and disseminate new scientific progress among ASD scientists and their trainees from around the world. The first and primary aim of the meeting is to promote exchange and dissemination of the latest scientific findings and to stimulate research progress in understanding the nature, causes, and treatments for ASD. Research on ASD involves sophisticated behavioral and biological approaches.  ASD affects people’s functioning in virtually every domain, requiring interdisciplinary research collaboration to gain comprehensive knowledge of the disorder.

ERIC (European Research and Innovation Conference) was held in conjunction with Research in Intel event. The event was viewed by press and analysts and other ERIC attendees on October 22nd & 23rd, 2012 in Barcelona, Spain.

The conference promote a world class research and innovation ecosystem in Europe through focused research and innovation between enterprise, academia and policy makers. Advance further understanding of applied strategic research in the following areas: social Innovation, computer architecture, securing clouds and mobility. More information.

The ASC-Inclusion project will be presented at the ‘Technologies for Autism: Tools, Trends and Testimonials Conference‘ in Valencia on July 6 to 8, 2012.

This conference will include the latest research in the field of autism and technology, as well as demonstrations of new products. It will also provide an opportunity for parents and people with autism to come together with researchers and software developers and network, give feedback and participate in a forum to discuss the future of the field.

The ASC-Inclusion project will be presented at the Conference by partner organisation, Autism-Europe.

Three FP7-ICT projects aim at developing Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion (DGEI): ASC-Inclusion, MASELTOV and TARDIS.

The three projects can be seen as complementary, because they share much in terms of their respective methodologies (user-centred iterative design), technical solutions (all three propose to rely on the serious gaming paradigm to deliver support and to motivate the users) and in terms of the context of the application (in all three projects the target population has special needs, either socially and economically determined, or neuro-developmentally conditioned).

To capitalise on the similarities between the three consortia, ASC-Inclusion, MASELTOV and TARDIS propose specific tasks to identify the potential and the best method for concrete clustering and synergies early in the projects. To enable this, a first closed workshop for all members of the three projects has been held in Brussels on 19 April 2012.

Read more

This week marked the fifth annual World Autism Awareness Day on April 2.

World Autism Awareness Day was declared by the United Nations General Assembly five years ago as an annual day to draw attention to the urgent needs of people with autism around the world.

Autism is extremely common. Approximately 1 in 150 people have it [1]. Yet it is a condition that is very often misunderstood and many people with autism across Europe still lack basic access to accurate diagnosis, appropriate treatment, education, employment and social inclusion.

For 5 million people in Europe who have autism, greater awareness is urgently required to enable them to live up to their full potential.

Listen to the UN Secretary General’s message for WAAD 2012

Events and awareness raising activities took place all over Europe for WAAD 2012. These included ceremonies, public talks, film festivals, art exhibitions, marches, flash mobs and many more.

In cities across Europe and around the world, prominent buildings were lit up blue for the night. These include the Chateau de Versailles near Paris, Wester Tower in Amsterdam, the Bourse in Brussels, the City Hall in Lisbon and the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. Since 2010, hundreds of buildings around the world have been lit up blue each year as part of an awareness raising initiative called ‘Light it up blue’ by US organisation, Autism Speaks.

Find out more about events that took place across Europe as part of World Autism Awareness Day 2012

See buildings around the world that were lit up in blue

[1] Autism Europe, 2010, Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders – Identification, Understanding, Intervention. This publication is available at: http://www.autismeurope.org/publications/documents-on-autism/

This website goes live in February 2012.

Stay tuned for updates about ASC-Inclusion interactive emotion games!