Visualization of Turkish for autistic and mentally retarded children

The use of software technologies for supporting the education of disabled children continues to increase both in quantity and quality. L2I is a set of computer programs that assists the education and training of autistic and mentally retarded children. These children are known to have difficulties in grasping fairly abstract concepts. L2I is intended to circumvent the abstractness of linguistically encoded conceptual structures via visual images. The software has also the potential to teach and/or assist a variety of basic skills including reading, writing and communicating. Each component constituting L2I has been tested with a group of students with autism and mental retardation in a special education center. In the light of the observations made over these tests, this paper presents how L2I can be benefited from in a special education program.