Determined dad praised for invention which revolutionised daughter's life

When a father from Co. Limerick discovered his daughter was autistic, he was determined to do everything in his power to make life a little easier for his little girl.

Robert Laffan, a student at Limerick's Institute of Technology, decided to put his skills to incredible use by designing an app, specifically designed to help his daughter, Sadie, communicate with her parents.

According to the father-of-one, the app has revolutionised his daughter's day-to-day life and allows her to communicate with himself and wife Emily with little to no stress, saying: "If Sadie wishes to communicate with either us, she touches one of our images on screen."

Explaining that the process of communication is based purely on images, Robert goes on to say: "On the second and third screen is a list of her desires, wants, needs and how she feels. For instance if she wants a particular food, she pushes a food image.Then on the third screen all her favourite foods come up and she pushes the one she wishes."

Opening up about his daughter's diagnosis, Robert explained: "We discovered Sadie was autistic when she was two as she was not responding and interacting like you would expect at that age. It was a shock, but rather than feeling sorry for ourselves we decided we would do everything possible for Sadie."

In addition to revolutionising his daughter's life, the determined father hopes to expand on this idea, saying: "The patent application was filed in March and I am having talks today with Enterprise Ireland about getting into their enterprise acceleration programme 'New Frontiers'. It would be great if I could get a new business going and create jobs with this."

Robert's invention has earned the 38-year-old an Engineers Ireland innovation award.