The family team behind Little Butterflies Technology is well on its way to achieving national recognition for their innovative work in disability tech, even though none of the members are old enough to hold a driver’s licence.
Gifted school-age siblings, Amelia, Jacob and Addison Munday, from Berkeley Vale, founded Little Butterflies several years ago with help from their parents.
Earlier this November, the Munday’s were a national finalist in the Junior Student category at the Australian Information Industry Association’s annual iAwards ceremony for their app, Talk to the Hand – Learn AUSLAN.
Although the siblings didn’t take out the top prize, their app did receive a merit award, adding to the national iAward they received in 2019 for another app they developed, Talk to the Hand – My Bucket’s Full, which is designed to help people with sensory processing disorders.
Between them, the siblings have done all the design, coding and marketing for both apps, which are available to the public via the Little Butterflies website.
At just 15, Amelia is already in her second year of university and says knowledge of disability and a fascination with STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) are all part of her family life.
“There are eight of us siblings, and five of us are participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, including our eldest brother, Alex, who is deaf.
“All of us could sign Auslan before we could speak English.
“Alex has always found it hard to communicate with non-Auslan users, and we really wanted to do something to make a difference for him and others in the deaf community,” she said.
Both Jacob (13) and Addison (12) are on the autism spectrum and are home schooled by their mother Angie, along with their other siblings.
They also live with a mix of sensory and auditory processing conditions, which in Addison’s case has caused a speech disorder.
Amelia is the Little Butterflies lead software engineer and focuses on back-end coding, while Addison handles front-end engineering and marketing, with Jacob the graphic designer and videographer.
The Learn AUSLAN app is aimed mainly at school children, with a mix of fun-filled videos, pictures, quizzes, songs and games to guide people through the learning process.
There are six main signing categories to learn about: Alphabet, Greetings, Colours, Animals, People and Families.
“All the feedback we’ve had about the app has been really positive,” Amelia said.
“We’re also looking at doing a bit more development to make the user experience better so we can have it available for download on the Apple and Google app stores.”
The My Bucket’s Full app is a tool for people that allows them to self manage their sensory processing conditions.
It includes activities to help people wake up in the morning and get ready for the day, to refocus and stay on task, and to manage sensory overload or under stimulation.
“One of the senior executives at the online marketplace Gumtree is using it for his son, who lives with ADHD,” said Addison.
“Our family also uses it constantly because it’s so useful in managing sensory processing issues.”
When not designing apps, the three tech whizzes have formed a team with their younger siblings to compete in the First Lego League Challenge series, which takes place here in Australia and overseas with thousands of young people aged 16 and under taking part.
“The competition is based around programming Lego bots to complete missions around a set course, a bit like a board game, and how well your bots do determines how you go in the League,” Jacob explained.
“Our younger siblings share our love of STEM and they’re part of our Next Gen robotics team, which allows us to mentor them while we compete,” Amelia said.
“We’ve been competing for six years now and we’ve been invited to international competitions three times.
“We went to Denmark for the first one in 2017, the second one was last year’s Asia Pacific championships in Sydney, and we were due to compete again this year in Sydney but the event got cancelled due to the Coronavirus,” she added.
Amelia, Addison and Jacob agree that the Talk to the Hand apps might one day form the core of a disability-tech company focused on developing tools for people with disabilities.
The trio is already well advanced with another project called AUSGLOVE, prototype gloves with inbuilt sensor technology that detects sign language and translates it into text that can be sent via Bluetooth to an app on the user’s phone.
“For someone like my brother Alex, what that means is that he would be able to put the gloves on and sign whatever he wants to communicate, which would then be sent to his phone so that his signs are displayed as text to communicate with anyone,” Amelia said.
The siblings also have their own separate ambitions.
Addison is keen on marketing useful disability technology and products, while Jacob has set his sights on video game design.
Amelia is studying for a double degree at Sydney’s Macquarie University, a Bachelor of Medical Sciences and a Bachelor of Cognitive Sciences, with the ultimate aim of pursuing a career in biotechnology.
“Things like robotic limbs, medical machinery of all types, it fascinates me,” Amelia said.
With this year’s iAwards finished, the Little Butterflies team is already planning their new entry for 2021 when they will all be another year older, wiser and tech savvier.
Source:
Press release, Nov 19
Dave Moodie, NDIS Media