A Boy From Skopje Invented an Application for Autistic Children

More than 10,000 people have downloaded the Sliko Word application, which was created by fifteen-year-old Darijan Shekerov from Skopje to help children with autism and speech impediments.


Darian made the application at 14 years in order to facilitate the communication of these children with the family and the environment. With this application he won 3000 projects from around the world in the category "Fighting diseases and hunger".

- This application facilitates the communication of these children with their family and the environment. I did it at the request of the parents and the association for children with autism and speech impediments. It's easy to use it and it's free. I have the intention of continuing to upgrade the Sliko Word program. It works by selecting a specific topic you are interested in by clicking on the photo for it, and a voice comes out of it, borrowed from my sister Srna, who describes the photo, explains the young Macedonian genius for the Serbian Telegraph.

He told Telegraph that he was doing this with a heart in order to help children with autism and speech impediments, which he called his work "from children for children".

His application was also acknowledged by the Ministry of Education, and applied by parents, speech therapists and teachers in specialized schools for children with special needs.

- It started with the request of my colleague from a job that has an autistic child. The teacher of the child saw an android application in English, so the colleague knew that Darjan was involved in programming and asked me if he could make it in Macedonian. The Association of Autistic Children addressed several companies for the preparation of the application, but they asked a lot of money, others refused to say that they had no economic interest. My son gladly accepted.

Darjan has already shown interest in a computer for his four years, but not for cartoons and games, but as a tool. Parents provided him with educational games for the computer, most in English. Through these games the genius learned the Cyrillic and Latin script, read and write first in English, and then in Macedonian. Darian is now fluent in English and German, and he knows more computer languages: C / C ++, Java, .NET, Objectiv-C, Python, Android, iOS, HTML5 & CSS3, JavaScript, PHP ...

- I was interested in making an Android mobile app since I was 12 years. I am self-taught for android. So far, I have made 16 applications. All are free to download from the Google Play Store. These applications are educational, informative and entertaining. My most successful application is "Sliko zbor". The latest one is called "Colorful Alphabet" and is intended for children of pre-school age. It is actually a primer on a mobile phone, says Darjan Shekerov.

Darjan has participated in many domestic and world competitions in the field of mathematics and computer science, his desire is when he finishes secondary and higher education in the field of computer science to be a programmer in Macedonia or some famous software company abroad.

SOURCE: MACTEL