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Executive Summary

Decent Essays

54 million Americans have a disability. Said more clearly, one in five Americans have a disability. Extended globally there are more than 610 million people in the world with some sort of disability or special needs (Manning-Schaffel, 2007). Upon reviewing most available market analysis it is apparent that this group is not being directly market to on a large scale. Likewise there is both a great need and many new opportunities as technology quickly advances. From a financial perspective this group is spending $8.8 billion USD worldwide on assistive devices primarily being pushed through medical representatives. This market is projected to reach $11 billion USD by 2015 and to continue at a 5%+ growth rate thereafter ("Assistive devices …show more content…

In evaluating the special needs market I am particularly familiar with speech and language, occupational, physical, behavioral, and visual. These are the particular markets that I will be targeting for children between the ages of 6 months and 12 years of age. Because I am designing applications for this particular age group there are some very specific things I will need to do in the apps to be successful. Because this group is unlikely to have the same patience as other groups common app features such as settings, splash screens, rating requests, advertisements, and missing functionality will have to be eliminated. I will also need to maintain simple and easy to use interfaces that are clear, self directed, and very colorful. Also, because these apps may be used with a variety of external devices from USB buttons to wheelchairs, my apps will need to be able to be used with a variety of external devices that I will not have the chance to evaluate prior to release of the app. Children also like to have fun while being challenged and rewarded, this means that even functional apps need to have the ability to bring the concept of play into everyday use. These apps also need to be extremely dynamic children get bored quickly and will move onto another app. My apps need to feel like they are multiple simple apps (Ibarra, 2011).
In addition to my current

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