This is truly awesome, though autism hasn't effect my family directly, the idea of open source solving a problem bigger than just hackers wanting more control of their software is great. When there isn't a market big enough for a commercial vendor to step in and build something, open source is the only viable alternative.
To me, the most interesting part of the article was this:
LeSieur didn't create the browser by consulting with people who are considered experts in disorders on the autism spectrum. The small software company he runs, People CD Inc., essentially designed the Zac Browser to meet Zackary's needs, and figured that the approach would likely help other autistic children.
It seems to me that this was a questionable decision at best. It's great to design the product to meet his grandson's needs, if it is intended only for his grandson. However, if he wants it to be likely to help other autistic children, he really ought to be speaking to other domain experts in the field. There's no good reason, in my opinion, for cutting yourself off from the research.
I think there are some lessons to be learned here for general users as well.
Just because the majority of people aren't on the autism spectrum doesn't mean that they should have to be subjected to distractions and confusing interfaces.
Sure, an interface for a six year old would be overly simplistic for the average user, but most of the tools out there fail remarkably in the other direction.
I think ultimately, software like this makes for interesting stories, but little more. Kids like this need voice recognition, and multi-touch. Sugar Labs is doing great stuff, but I think that hardware and basic HCI paradigm shifts should be the focus.
