Amazon Alexa Can Help People With Autism Do More On Their Own

Amazon's Echo connected speaker--and Alexa, the device's voice controlled brains that let users order pizzas and Ubers--is a hit. But the technology underlying Alexa can do more important things like helping people with special needs do more things on their own. Witness this recent blog post from Amazon that explores how Troy Larson, a senior architect for Amazon (amzn) Web Services, used two software tools for third-party developers to program a virtual assistant that cues his autistic son reminders about needing to eat or using the restroom. The first tool, "Lex," lets programmers build speech recognition into their own software. The second tool, "Polly," converts text to speech. Developers can use them to build their own voice commands and interactions into software.