The World & Autism
See how genes enables genius.
A technological marvel.
A book, redefined and reimagined.
The World and Autism is an upcoming book series that takes advantage of modern technology to explore the autistic umbrella. How Autism Makes You Perceive The World Differently is the first in this series, laying down the key foundations for the series in future. To put it simply, The World and Autism investigates and explores successful people who had autistic traits, with the book explaining how this helped or hindered them. The first book explores autism itself, featuring Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Temple Grandin, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Variety is the key here, there is no one person or one right way to do things. The book aims to inspire people and educate them to do their best work.
One other key thing to mention here is how this book is no ordinary book but an ebook, and no ordinary ebook at that. This ebook is made specifically for the iBooks Store featuring interactive image galleries, videos and quotes. The idea is for the experience to come alive in the user's hands and assist those with disabilities to read the book their way.
Learn in colour.
Bold and colourful, the best way to engage.
With autism, the brain responds differently to stimulus and has more neural connections. This means they process information fast and they process more of it. One way to engage both autistic people and children is having bold typography and vivid colours, while children may not be able to read the entire contents of the book, they will understand the meaning behind the colours and the images, helping tell the tale in a different way to different people.
The majority of people are visual thinkers too, so it's not just an advantage limited to both autistic people and children. By incorporating such a visual language, along with a very round and soft layout, the user can be best attracted to and experience in full the contents of the book. This is to be compared with black and white only, with simple text and a bland experience, people are much less likely be interested.
Explore your way.
Navigate your way through, your way.
Another advantage of an ebook is how you can skip to any section you like. You are the one guiding yourself through the book, instead of being directed by me as the author. In the screenshot accompanying this feature, you can see a navigation bar at the top of the page. This replaces the typically used author and chapter information as you know what chapter you are on due to the colours used and that who wrote it is irrelevant in this case.
Not only are chapters easy to navigate on an ebook, it's just a swipe, but this navigation bar makes going to each section in chapters even easier. The entire way to go about consuming this book is your way. Visual thinkers have plenty of images to examine, verbal thinkers will love the glossary and pattern thinkers will love the structure and coherence of the book.
Media to engage.
Enrich your experience with videos and points of interest.
The main reason for me picking an ebook with the iBooks format rather than just a PDF version of a physical book was for the interactive content and methods of engagement far in advance of what is usually possible. The best example of this are videos and points of interest. Key points throughout the book are made known to you with underlined and bold text. Learn about combinatory play, associative thinking, the digital hub and much more in minutes directly within this ebook.
Videos are a lot more self explanatory. Tap to play, tap more to enlarge and take the experience full screen. Sometimes a video explaining or showing something is much better as an educational tool compared to my words alone. Hear and see why money shouldn't change you, why ebooks are the future and what a ten year dream coming to fruition looks like.
References at a touch.
A fully interactive bibliography. Research has never been so easy.
One of the most difficult things to do in a normal book, especially an educational one is going back and forth between the content you read and words that are new to you. Flicking between the page you're on and the back of the book to find that word is cumbersome at best. My ebook takes this out of the equation by giving you an interactive bibliography that takes you straight to the source. Finding out new terms and understanding them in the right context has never been easier with this.
This technology is not new, these books have been possible for over five years, it's just about how you use them and how we as creators make them. Changes can be made and making sure you have the best experience as a reader is all that matters. This is the next step for publishing and getting your own ideas out there. This is the future.
Download.
Get your hands on the book.
If you insist on getting your hands on a physical copy of the book, I've made a version specifically for you! I understand that not everyone has access to the technology shown with this project so you can get your hands on just what you need. Softcover, hardcover, dusk jackets, I'll have you sorted.
Below is the Apple Books Store and PDF download links for those who want a digital copy.