The Design and Prototyping of an App to Teach Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities to Empower Them Against Abuse
Authors: 
Krishna Venkatasubramanian, 
Tina-Marie Ranalli, Jack Lanoie, Alexander Sinapi, Andrew Laraw Lama, Jeanine Skorinko, Mariah Freark, and Nancy AlterioAuthors Info & Claims
Krishna Venkatasubramanian, Tina-Marie Ranalli, Jack Lanoie, Alexander Sinapi, Andrew Laraw Lama, Jeanine Skorinko, Mariah Freark, and Nancy AlterioAuthors Info & ClaimsArticle No.: 16, Pages 1 - 31
Abstract
In the United States, the abuse of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) is at epidemic proportions. However, the reporting of such abuse has been severely lacking. It has been found that individuals with I/DD are more aware of when and how to report abuse when they have received abuse-prevention training. Consequently, in this article we present the design and prototyping of a mobile-computing app called Recognize that empowers adults with I/DD to independently learn about abuse. To this end, we first conducted an auto-ethnographic co-design of Recognize with individuals and self-advocates from the I/DD community. Next, based on the outcomes from the co-design process, we developed three initial prototype variants of Recognize and performed a preliminary user study with six individuals with I/DD who have experience teaching others with I/DD about abuse. Based on the findings of this preliminary user study, we created a consolidated prototype of Recognize and performed a more detailed qualitative user study with 11 individuals with I/DD who represented the eventual users of Recognize. The participants in this user study found it to be viable for use by individuals with I/DD. We end the article with a discussion of the implications of our findings toward the development of a deployable version of Recognize and similar apps.
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June 2023
176 pages
ISSN:1936-7228
EISSN:1936-7236
DOI:10.1145/3596450
- Editors:
- Tiago Guerreiro,
- Stephanie Ludi
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Publication History
Published: 13 July 2023
Online AM: 26 October 2022
Accepted: 20 October 2022
Revised: 13 October 2022
Received: 28 June 2022
Published in TACCESS Volume 16, Issue 2
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