VIDEO: Invention for children with autism stemmed from Limerick father’s love

A father has developed new channels of communication for his autistic young daughter with an invention which may revolutionise one-to-one contact with people who have non-verbal disabilities.

Rob Laffan’s touchscreen device ‘Tippy Talk’ has brought new joy to his wife Emily and their four-year-old daughter Sadie — and in the process won him an Engineers Ireland innovation award.

Rob, 38, of Old Cork Road, Limerick, who has just completed a course in automation and control engineering at Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT), is in talks with Enterprise Ireland to help develop and market Tippy Talk.

He came up with the idea working on human, machine interface designs as part of his studies at LIT.

READ MORE: 7 myths about autism debunked .

“We discovered Sadie was autistic when she was two as she was not responding and interacting like you would expect at that age. It was a shock, but rather than feeling sorry for ourselves we decided we would do everything possible for Sadie,” he explained.

During his studies at LIT, he worked on touch screen technology and put together a programme of messaging using symbols Sadie could understand and interact with.

“It operates as three screens worked by touch buttons. On the first there is a picture of Emily and me. If Sadie wishes to communicate with either us, she touches one of our images on screen.

“On the second and third screen is a list of her desires, wants, needs and how she feels. For instance if she wants a particular food, she pushes a food image. Then on the third screen all her favourite foods come up.

“Yesterday I was in the garden and she communicated with me. On going through the screens she pushed on an image of the Parkway Shopping Centre. This is where she wanted to go and we went there. She was able to let me know that she felt very happy.

Rob Laffan, a student at Limerick Institute of Technology, has won the 2015 Engineers Ireland Innovative Student Engineer of the Year Awards for ‘Tippy Talk’, a touch-screen system which allows him to communicate with his four-year-old daughter Sadie who has autism. Picture: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland

“At present I have over 260 different images on the touch screens. Emily and I are the only images on the first screen of people she wishes to contact. As she gets older I can enlarge on the images to meet her needs.”

Rob said while his invention is not a cure or answer to all Sadie’s problems, the new touch screen line of communication has led to a huge improvement as she is happier and less frustrated.

Rob said: “I came up with the idea last November and worked on it for about five months. The patent application was filed in March and I am having talks with Enterprise Ireland about getting into their enterprise acceleration programme ‘New Frontiers’. It would be great if I could get a new business going and create jobs.”

READ MORE: 7 myths about autism debunked .