The Effects of Sensory Design on Autistic Children

Abstract

Autism is a lifelong handicap that affects their social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences. Knowing them as a unique person, designated learning environment should consider the sensory issues to overcome their needs. However, designers are lack of awareness in terms of sensory design during their design stage. The objective is to identify the sensory design of the classroom environment, while the paper aims to develop the Design Criteria Checklist of sensory design for Autism Centre. The result of the study highlighted factors that relate to the quality physical learning environment.Keywords: Autism; sensory design, physical learning environment; design criteria checklist;eISSN 2398-4295 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.