The University joins World Autism Awareness Day on 2 April with activities on the Poblenou campus
They will be provided by the Cognitive Media Technologies research group in the framework of the “Connecta’t al Blau” campaign, organized by the association Aprenem. The aim is to raise awareness in society about the needs of people with autism and their families.
The Cognitive Media Technologies research group (CMTech) of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at UPF will be a protagonist of the World Autism Awareness Day, on 2 April 2017, by adhering to the campaign “Connecta’t al Blau” of the association Aprenem.
Between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm, the group will perform activities in the La Nau building on the Poblenou campus with the aim of raising awareness of society about the needs of people with autism and their families. The campaign seeks to break down barriers between people who suffer from this disorder and others to foster contact that can help demystify it.
They will do so via two whole body video games, created specifically for children with autism spectrum disorder: The Adventures of Pico and Lands of fog. These two video games use full-body interactive systems to promote social initiation behaviour in children with ASD. This behaviour is essential so that they can achieve a greater degree of autonomy in their life.
The first is a video game designed for the Kinect camera, which detects the movements of the person when they stand in front and projects them onto a screen. The theme is an adventure in which the child plays with a virtual character that comes from space. In the second, the child plays together with a child with typical development, in a large-format interactive space projected onto the floor where they discover a hidden world under a virtual fog.
These projects are part of the research by the CMTech. The first was developed within the project M4ALL, funded by the European Commission within the Lifelong Learning programme. The second is the result of a grant from the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP) and Obra Social LaCaixa, through the RecerCaixa programme.
Connecta’t al Blau
This initiative seeks to sensitize the public concerning the importance of the inclusion of people with autism, a neurological disorder that affects the perception and processing of information prevalent in 1 in 100 births.
In addition to UPF, there will be solidarity activities at a further sixteen locations: sensory games on the beach, multi sports, visits to the Zoo and going sailing, among many others. All the activities of the campaign include a ticket-donation that will be used to continue to make the inclusion of children with autism possible.
The day will culminate by illuminating some fifty buildings and spaces in Barcelona blue, as part of #Lightitupblue, an international campaign which helps globalize awareness.