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Zac Browser for Children with Autism

The Zac Browser’s market share is close to 1. Not 1%, but one user. It does not have fancy features, certainly can’t compete with Firefox, Safari, Opera or IE7. But that’s why it’s users (in reality likely more than one) can use it. It is largely simplified, a lot of “noise”, be it adult sites or enhanced features are filtered out. The UI is very kid-friendly, here’s just one screen courtesy of the Associated Press and SFGate.

It was built by John LeSieur, whose 6-year-old grandson, Zackary has autism.

I know very little about autism. My only exposure was a few days after I wrote a post about autistic kids – for the next 3-4 days I was totally submerged in intense discussion on a number of blogs and forums, as well as private email correspondence. The reaction was massive and passionate, and a very moving experience for me. In the end all I learned was that I still don’t know anything about autism, and that everybody involved, including the children, their parents, family, teachers…etc are coping with difficulties every day I (we) can’t even fathom.

Which is why it’s great to read that this Grandfather first helped his grandson, and now is working on making the tool available to other children with autism.

Thanks to Jeff Nolan for discovering it. It’s the best news I read today.

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