The Autistic Guide to Cancer
Kindly supported by Action Hampshire's Communities against Cancer team we are running a project that aims to help autistic people become more cancer savvy through awareness of Prevention, Screening and Treatment.
The inspiration for this project arose when looking at excellent CRUK posters that seemed to work well except when taken from a logical viewpoint. For example '40% of cancers are preventable' screams the headline, which is great news. Unless, of course, you think that you can spend the rest of your life following the guidelines and be more likely to contract one of the other cancers. Also, most cancer awareness posters tend to have inherently negative messages including mortality statistics. Do you know which cancer is the biggest killer?
So we thought that a positive message approach using technology as our friend was the way to create a single poster (or set of posters) that would reach the full spectrum of autistic people. Hence the Augmented Reality poster.
Augmented Reality in this context simply means that if you view the poster through a tablet or smart phone using an app, the poster 'comes to life' through animation or video, and allows the user to reach beyond the poster through other web links - to a video library for instance. It means that the poster can be accessed many times and people can learn at their own pace.
Because this is a PALS Society project, all development work will be carried out by a team of autistic creatives, and the poster will be thoroughly tested by volunteers from Autism Hampshire's Serendipity Groups.