You may be asking yourself why we would feature a typing program for children with autism. Why would that be important or helpful? Typically a child with autism struggles with fine motor skills at some level. For the reading child with poor fine- motor skills, typing can help him enter the world of written communication. While learning letter shapes and how to hold a pencil is very important, by teaching your child to type you will be able to begin working on the actual communication skills without waiting for those physical limitations to resolve themselves.

Typing Instructor is ideally suited for autistic children due to one critical, yet seldom- known feature: the ability to create your own lessons. This means that you can set your child up to learn at his pace, keeping the lessons short and to the point, and inserting his favorite words as early as possible.

I would suggest that you use their lesson plans as your starting point, and introduce keys in the same order in which they do. This way your child will not teach himself to just hunt-and-peck, but really to type. To set him up, just go to his lessons and click personalize > create. Simply type in a few lines of type, give it a name, and click save, it is as easy as that.

Another helpful feature is the on-screen picture of a hand using the correct finger to punch in the keys. This is a dynamic graphic and will always show your child the correct position for the next key, making it a very helpful tool for them to reference while typing.

We started Krissy on this and found that she picked it up rapidly. I usually worked with her to be sure she used the correct fingers, especially when we introduced a new lesson. Soon she only needed verbal reminders, and she quickly picked up on the time-saving advantages of following the directions.
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