Designing an accessible web app to teach piano to students with autism

Guidelines for teaching music to children with autism mainly focus on the environment and activities, often neglecting how to deliver music instructions in an accessible and effective way. Technology-enhanced intervention offers a structured, repeatable, and coherent training environment, which can be modulated according to the student's needs. The Suoniamo app is specifically designed to help students with autism learn to play music in a visually structured way. The app is co-designed with professionals experienced in training people with autism. It provides modules for learning how to read, identify and interpret musical notation (note position and values, pauses, etc.) on a virtual piano keyboard. After this structured training, the child may generalize mastered concepts on a real piano, being able to interpret notes, rhythms, pauses and simple scores in the pentagram. Preliminary results of a pilot study with three students with autism appear to confirm the validity of the proposed approach.