Chatbot, as Educational and Inclusive Tool for People with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

In the current health crisis due to COVID-19, people with intellectual disabilities have especially suffered. The development of their social abilities has been restricted, first with the lockdown and then with the current limitation of social life. They have lost some of these abilities or are having difficulty practicing them. CapacitaBOT, our use case, is a mobile application based on a chatbot, which allows people with intellectual disabilities to work and train their social skills. A chatbot is a software tool that allows to maintain a conversation in automatic way between the user and the machine, the mobile application. CapacitaBOT can be considered by its features, an educational ICT tool that introduces innovation, inclusion and quality in order to be integrated into education for people with intellectual disabilities. The tool trains these people for real-life situations and can also be considered a resource that allows the application of active methodologies since it makes easy the learning of social skills. In addition, all the contributions of the tool are aligned with the objectives of sustainable development because it is a tool that facilities the accessibility of people with disabilities, who more than ever have been affected by social isolation caused by the COVID-19 crisis.