Prompt's TechBlog

I came across a story in the Boston Globe the other day about a grandfather who built a Web browser for his grandson. Why would he do that, instead of using Firefox, you ask? His six-year-old grandson has autism and can't use a normal browser.

Too many options confused his grandson and made him react with violence. The grandfather, being in the software industry, took it upon himself to build the browser for his grandson. After looking for tools online, and not finding anything, he created it himself with the software company he runs. He named it the Zac Browser For Autistic Children in honor of his grandson, Zackary.

It eliminates many of the distractions that a normal web browser would have, and simplifies it so that autistic children won't feel too overwhelmed and lose confidence while surfing. Here's a video that shows what it does:

The best part, besides helping the grandson? The man who built it made it open source so that anyone can download it and see if it helps an autistic loved one. This is symbolic of the open source community in general, the philosophy that the greater good is more important than money. Open source companies are successful because of this philosophy, not in spite of it.

Although not his main goal, I'm sure he will see business benefits because of this article. His software company, People CD, was prominently featured in a Boston Globe article because of what he did. The article itself was surely read by hundreds of thousands of people, and links spread like wildfire on prominent geek sites and blogs. That's just one article, and the Zac Browser was in other prominent publications, such as PC Magazine, PC World, US News and more. Surely, a percentage of them will search for his company to read more about it, as I did before writing this.

This truly heart-warming story shows that doing good can pay off.

Labels: autism, Firefox, open source, web 2.0