When you first meet James, you realize immediately that there’s something different about him. He’s 16 but reads at a second-grade level. He speaks loudly, often interrupting other people’s conversations. He has difficulty recounting the events of his day or sustaining attention to any conversation. He has trouble with simple arithmetic.

Like tens of thousands of other children, James has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which makes life a daily challenge for his parents, Marie and Rob, who live just outside Washington, D.C.

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“I think … therefore I am not a diagnosis” by John Jay Glenn (via Flickr).

Yet, like many with ASD, James has some unusual abilities. He can quote dialog verbatim from nearly any Disney or Star Wars movie, Marie says. He can find places he’s visited in the past by poring over satellite images on Google Maps, Rob adds. And with the help of an iPad outfitted by the special-needs coordinators at his school, James can lead something approaching a normal life for a high school student.

James’ story isn’t all that unique. The number of autistic children is staggering — one in 68 has been diagnosed with ASD, according to studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means there’s one in every two or three classrooms in America.

More: Eight Things You Ought to Know About Autism (but Might Not)

I can name half a dozen families that have at least one member with ASD, and I bet you can, too. Yet most of what I thought I knew about autism came from watching movies like Rain Man or reading books by Oliver Sacks.

Because April is National Autism Awareness month, I thought I’d try to learn more about this complex and mysterious disorder. One of the more remarkable things I’ve discovered is both how deeply embedded ASD is in the world of tech, and how technology is helping to make a huge difference in the lives of people who live with it each day.

The iPad influence

Assistive technology for the developmentally disabled has been available for decades, but until recently most of it has been extremely low tech or extremely expensive. The iPad is helping to change that.

For example, many people with ASD are nonverbal, even if they can understand what’s being said to them and formulate responses in their brains. In the past, parents might have spent $8,000 or more on a dedicated single-purpose computer to help their kids communicate via symbols. With the tap of a picture, the machine would recite the word associated with it; tap several in a row, and it would string the words together to form rudimentary sentences. Now kids with ASD can get many of the same capabilities by installing AssistiveWare’s $220 Proloquo2Go app .

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