Tag: aac

jabberwockypie:

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck this hurts. This hurts so much and I want to scream, but that would be impolite.

Positive or fluffy or nice distractions welcome!

Bob Ross on Youtube

Due South Full Length Pilot on Youtube
Due South Season One on Youtube

Weightless by Marconi Union (anti-anxiety ambient music – I use this a lot)

Miracle Modus stimming fractal app by and for autistic people

If you can afford them, Emma recommends The Room series of games, Bejeweled Classic, and Machinarium (though I’d have a walkthrough on hand for the last one, to avoid frustration if you can’t find a solution to a room quickly).

I love Alphabear, Candy Crush, 2048, Cut The Rope, Monument Valley, Contre Jour and Blendoku. Drawn and Chocolatier are good, solid series of games, too, but they’re older. Both are available through Big Fish Games. Sorry, most of this list aren’t free, but they’re ones I go back to when I’m stressed and overwhelmed. I also have a Mah Jong app and a bunch of other puzzle style games.

JABTalk is a free android app for communication. It’s programmable for your needs, and might help if you find the stress and pain are making basic speech harder than usual.

autieblesam:

[Image is a poster explaining briefly the origin and meaning of green, yellow, and red interaction signal badges, referred to above as Color Communication Badges.]

deducecanoe:

justsjwthings:

oldamongdreams:

greencarnations:

CAN WE DO THESE AT CONS

SECONDED.

if youre not autistic or suffer from an actual disorder, dont use these. its not cute.

er… you know a lot of autistic people go to conventions, right? And people with social anxiety disorders and panic disorders? Shit if I could get away with using this at work I would. 

Hello there, justsjwthings.

I would like to introduce myself.  I refer to myself as Sam Thomas, though my legal name and how a lot of people know me is Matthew.  I am officially diagnosed autistic.

Over one week in June 2013 (last summer), I was in Washington, DC for an autism conference called the Autism Campus Inclusion (ACI) summer leadership program run by the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network for autistic college students.

If you have any question as to the truth of this, I would like to direct your attention to this YouTube video that ASAN produced promoting the above-mentioned conference.  I appear as the first person in the video and you can find more images of my face on my blog.

At this conference, not only did we use these communication badges pictured above, but we actually had the opportunity to meet Jim Sinclair, the inventor of these badges.

During the part of the conference in which Jim Sinclair gave us a history of Autism Network International (ANI)—which they were a co-founder of—they talked to us about the establishment of this particular piece of assistive technology.  Basically, it was a simple idea that seemed to fit a need and quickly became very popular among many autistic spaces for it’s practicality and ease of use.

The conference it originated from is called Autreat and is held annually by ANI. This is an autism conference that accepts Autistics and Cousins (ACs)—that is, anyone diagnosed or otherwise self-identifying with any disorder autistic or similar that may share a number of autistic traits.

There was a need.  The need was met.  This is how we can safely assume most technology either emerges or becomes popular.

We also talked about something called Universal Design and the Curb-Cutter Effect.  The Curb-Cutter Effect is when something to fit a specific need is found to create convenience in a broader area than intended.  Curb cuts allowing for wheelchair accessibility to sidewalks proved to also be convenient to anyone who may have trouble with steps or even simply a mother with a baby stroller or maybe a child with a wagon.  This is a desirable outcome with disability rights advocacy as creating convenience for non-disabled people often makes the assistive technology easier to advocate for.

In this sense, these colored communication badges could serve that Curb-Cutter effect.  Not only would this be perfectly acceptable for non-disabled people to use for convenience, but would also help to increase their effectiveness and convenience for those of us who need them.  Here are a few examples:

  • Increased popularity makes the colored communication badges more easily recognizable to the general public, making them as effective outside the above-mentioned autism conferences as inside.
  • Increase in demand would create increase in supply and availability, likely making these available to pretty much anyone and even being included with, say, the name tags you are required to wear at most cons.
  • In addition to these helping people recognize the communication state of the wearer, the wearer will be able to recognize whom they can feel more comfortable to approach.
  • Increased popularity would make these badges more acceptable for public use and less alienating to those who would wear them frequently.

This is not something that we are completely incapable of surviving without; this is something that was convenient and made our lives a lot easier.  If that can be easily shared with the general public, then what purpose does it serve not to share it?

Thank you for reading.

I’d just like to add since it wasn’t mentioned by autieblesam, there’s a reason for the symbols as well as the colours – this is so that they’re accessible for people with colourblindness. As autieblesam said, like kerb cuts, this system can only HELP society if it’s more widely implemented, but DO IT RIGHT. Keep both the colours and the symbols, and keep them obvious – brightly coloured badges, lanyards or bracelets that are easy to read from a distance. People are going to screw up and accidentally address people who don’t want to be occasionally, and that’s unavoidable, but you reduce the chance of that happening drastically if you remember that the purpose of these is communication and don’t stylise, downsize or modify them to the point that they’re ineffective.

asanvan:

Check out the trailer for DEEJ, a film made by an non-speaking autistic advocate!

“A nonspeaking young man dreams of autistic civil rights. The
documentary film DEEJ with its insider view of autism, challenges us all
to live inclusion.”

https://www.deejmovie.com/

Genuinely sitting here with tears in my eyes. I read Reasonable People some years ago now, and it remains one of my favourite autism books, period. Since I found out there might be a film, I’ve been waiting, patiently, hopefully, and this looks like it’s going to be just as amazing as I hoped. So excited for the full movie. So happy.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

neurowonderful:

youneedacat:

The words of a group of autistic people who learned to type using the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) — what Tito Mukhopadhyay was taught by, except it doesn’t involve hitting people anymore (which is actively discouraged by the same woman who did hit Tito in the course of his “training”).

I always notice that parts of the autistic community that are more connected to the general developmental disability community, and are more likely to have been labeled as intellectually disabled as well as autistic, and those made up largely of those labeled low functioning, are far more racially and ethnically diverse than the “AS/HFA communities” (in name or in practice) that I’ve found online and offline.  The diversity in this video mirrors the diversity in my special ed school.  I don’t know what it is about the “high functioning” communities that attract so damn many white people and shut out so many people of color, but the “low functioning” autistic communities don’t have that problem.

Also please note that nobody is obligated to enjoy being autistic, especially if their main experience of being autistic is being trapped and unable to communicate their thoughts for years or decades when they have thoughts as complex to communicate as any “high functioning” person.  Lots of people who’ve gone years or decades with no communication system are highly ambivalent about their autism at best, and with good reason.. Not everyone, mind you, but that is a serious hardship to have to take on, and it’s not the same as having your speech shut down sometimes.  It’s never, ever being able to say anything important, even when it’s super important, even when it’s life and death.  And the people in these videos are the lucky ones for whom RPM was successful.  There are plenty of people who won’t ever learn to type or speak, and some of them are okay with that and some aren’t (judging from the words of people who were once in that category for a long part of their life and then came out of it).

Anyway, I’m glad this video was made.  All the words in the video are printed, not spoken.  They’re either superimposed on the screen, or writteon on boards.  So it’s not blind-accessible, and I don’t have the spoons to make a transcript.

And I’m reminded once again why autistic communities comprised mostly of nonspeaking people and people who’ve been in the DD system, tend to be more welcoming to me than other communities:  They’re more diverse.  Racially, ethnically, class, sexuality, gender, everything.  And that makes it so there’s a much wider space for me to make into my own, in these communities.  Even if they’re still not quite ‘home’.  And even if I still don’t quite fit because my life story isn’t the one people expect of a nonspeaking autistic adult.  But still.  Things like this make me ache for community.

Just where I can fade into the background.  That’s what I wish I could do.  Fade into the background, not be a big name, just be me, just be me around people who can mostly read me even when I’m not typing.  I’d love to find a community where nobody spoke and nobody typed for certain periods of time, whether they were ever capable of it or not, and nobody saw it as “Oh no people are overloaded we have to Do Something about this, it’s bad!”  People would just see it as “Words are tiring and we’re not made of words and we want a break from words.”

Of course RPM often doesn’t allow that, at least during training sessions.  They’re very big on not allowing autistic people a moment to process things, just shoving them to the next level as fast as they can.  And it works, and I know exactly why it works, and many autistic people would gladly take that temporary tradeoff in order to learn to communicate in words.  But many autistic people also need time away from words and that needs to be respected too.

TL;DR:  I like this video.  It’s by several nonspeaking autistic people who learned to type using the RPM (Rapid Prompting Method).  I have my misgivings about the RPM but it does get results and those can be life-changing for those it works for.  I miss communities (like AutCom) that form around autistic people who mostly haven’t been considered ‘high functioning’, there’s a definite difference in diversity and in how welcoming they are to someone like me, versus the less diverse and less welcoming “AS/HFA communities” (whether they call themselves that or not, that’s what they are).  I guess the perfect community for me would be the “I fluctuate between categories and eat their remains for breakfast” community but I haven’t found that one yet.  Love the video.  Keep them coming.  All the words were written by autistic people.  Until someone makes a transcript, this is Deaf-accessible but not Blind-accessible.

I like this video. I like seeing autistics who found a thing that works for them. I like how the video was honest about how unimaginably frustrating and isolating it has to be to not be able to speak at all. I’m functionally verbal about 80% of the time, so even at my most frustrated or in my greatest struggles, I’ve never experienced what non-verbal autistics do.

That being said, I also like that this video also wasn’t a sob story. I love that the actual autistic people were the focus, that even in the scenes where they were working with RPM clinicians/facilitators/I don’t know the right word, there wasn’t that insiduous “able gaze”, no use of camera angles or lingering shots to frame the autistics as pitiable, small, young, or helpless and the non-autistic people as these towering angels acting on the bodies of autistic people. That happens a lot and it sucks, but this video was really good.

I think that, when it comes to verbal autistics, or autistics who would receive a “high-functioning” or Asperger’s diagnosis, there is a real lack of diversity in the community in large part because of the intersection between racism, classism, and inaccurate stereotypes about what autistics look like. Like, many people know that autistic girls/women are under-diagnosed, and the same goes for POC. I have heard from many, many autistic adult and teens who non-autistics would label as “high-functioning”, and if they are any race but white it seems like they are way more likely to recieve a misdiagnosis (I hear ODD or ADHD a lot for brown people, and schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder for black people quite a bit) or to be shot down entirely in their pursuit of an ASD diagnosis. This is totally unscientific, just coming from what I’ve heard and read others in the community saying and the messages/e-mails of people who contact me, but I think it happens, and happens a lot.

So when an autistic POC can’t talk or they look obviously disabled in “classical autism” way, I’m thinking an ASD diagnosis is more easily forthcoming, since professionals just can’t make that person fit into any other boxes, than in a case where an autistic POC can talk with their mouthparts. Those autistics can be more easily pushed into a category that professionals, influenced by the very pervasive racism and classism in the medical community, can feel better about.

I feel like the other large thing contributing to lack of diversity of in AS/HFA communities is racism coming straight from the community. Just straight up gross sentiment and behaviour from autistics, which is awful. Or thoughtlessness and being unintentionally closed off or uninviting. Like, it is not enough for white autistics to just not be racist, there also has to be an effort towards being inviting and welcoming to autistic POC, and purposefully moving over to make spaces for them.

But of course I’m part white, so I have white passing privilege and all that entails. Any autistic POC please feel free to correct me on anything I said here. And if you want to or feel comfy doing so, please chime in. Why is the HFA/AS community so darn white?

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Things You Can do to Help Disabled People That Don’t Cost A Cent

neurodiversitysci:

  • Do not talk about an obviously disabled person in front of them as if they can’t hear or understand you.
  • Do not talk to a disabled person’s companion instead of them.  
  • Ask permission before touching people, or their wheelchairs/other equipment. Even if you want to help.
  • Ask disabled people about their lives and really listen to their answers.  (Within reason. Asking people personal questions about their sex lives, for example, is rude unless you are very close to them and they’ve communicated they’re OK with that).
  • Listen to what they say whether they are speaking, writing, typing, using text to speech, using a letterboard, using PECS, gesturing, using sign language, or using any other form of communication.  People who cannot speak can still communicate.
  • Stand up for people you see getting bullied.
  • Understand that disabled people don’t just need friends, they can be friends, too.
  • Every public place does not need to have loud, blaring music and TVs with flashing screens.  
  • If you blog, put bright, flashing images that can trigger seizures under a cut so that people with seizures can avoid looking at them.
  • If a job can possibly be done without a person driving, don’t require candidates to drive/have a driver’s license, and don’t interview candidates and then reject them because they don’t drive.
  • When talking to someone who has trouble speaking or stutters, and takes a long time to speak, wait for them to answer. Don’t keep repeating the question or pressuring them. Yes, if you’re like me and your mind is going really fast and you forget what people are saying if they take too long, it can be hard to be patient.  Do it anyway.
  • If you are talking to a deaf person, make it easier for them to lip-read by facing towards them while looking at them, and not covering your mouth with your hands.
  • If you are talking to someone with hearing impairment or auditory processing disorder, it is more helpful to slow down or rephrase what you’re saying than to just speak more loudly.  
  • Some disabled people have difficulty understanding nonliteral language such as metaphors and idioms (e.g., “a stitch in time saves nine”). If you’re talking to someone like this, try explaining what you mean by these figures of speech, or just not using them.
  • Recognize that failure to make eye contact does not mean someone is lying to you. It may be uncomfortable for them.
  • Recognize that unwillingness to go out to loud, crowded bars does not mean someone isn’t interested in socializing with you.
  • If people have difficulty spelling, or using the appropriate jargon/terminology for your social group, do not assume they’re stupid.  You may need to paraphrase some “jargon” for them.
  • Recognize that a person can need time alone and it doesn’t mean they don’t like you or want to be with you. It’s just something they need so they can function at their best.
  • If a person does not recognize you, do not assume they don’t care about you.  They may be face-blind.
  • If a person does not remember your birthday (or other major names, numbers, or dates) do not assume they don’t care about you. They may simply have a bad memory.
  • Understand that a disabled person’s talents, however esoteric, are real, not unimportant “splinter skills.”
  • Colorblindness affects more than just knowing what color something is.  To a colorblind person, colors that they can’t see will look the same if they have the same degree of lightness/darkness.  That means that to a red-green colorblind person, a red rose on a green background will blend in instead of contrast starkly, and the Chicago CTA El map will be difficult to understand.  Understand that something that stands out to you and seems obvious may literally not be visible to a colorblind person.
  • Accept stimming.
  • Don’t tell them “but you look so normal.” But, if they accomplish something you know they were working really hard to do, it’s great to compliment them on it.
  • Understand that a person can be working incredibly hard to do something and may still not perform as well as you’d like them to, as well as the average person would, or as well as the situation demands.
  • If someone has a major medical problem, disability, or chronic illness, then just eating some special healthy diet or exercising more isn’t going to cure it. It might help, it might hurt, it might do nothing, but they’ve probably heard it before, and it’s none of your business in any case.
  • A person with OCD knows that checking or counting or whatever compulsion they perform won’t really prevent disaster from happening, it’s just a compulsion. That doesn’t stop them from feeling the need to do it anyway.  A person with anxiety may know at least some of their fears are irrational or unlikely to occur. That doesn’t stop them from feeling anxious.  A person with trichotillomania may know it hurts them to pull out their hair or pick at their skin, but they have trouble stopping themselves anyway.  A depressed person may know they would feel better if they got out of their house and talked to people, but that doesn’t make them feel any more up to doing those things. A person who hallucinates may know the hallucinations aren’t real, but that doesn’t make them go away or feel less upsetting.  You see the pattern?  You can’t cure people with mental illnesses by telling them they’re being irrational or hurting themselves.  If it were that easy, they’d have cured themselves already.
  • Do not tell a person with ADHD or mental illness that they should not be taking medication.  This is a personal decision. Furthermore, since medications have wide-ranging effects on people’s bodies and minds and often unpleasant side effects, most people taking medications have thought through the issue, done a cost-benefit analysis, and decided that the ability to function better is worth it.  Their decision should be respected.
  • A disabled person with intellectual disability who has the academic or IQ abilities of, say, a seven year old does not actually have the mind of a seven year old. They have different life experiences, needs, stages of life, bodies, and so on.
  • If a disabled person is having a meltdown, they are not angry, they are terrified.  They’re not throwing a tantrum or being aggressive, they have gone into fight or flight. The best thing you can do is remain calm yourself and help them calm down. It may help to keep your distance, keep your voice low and calm, let them retreat to a safe place if they know to do that, or remind them to do so if they don’t.  Reasoning with them won’t work well because they’re unlikely to be able to hear and understand you.  The worst thing you can do is start yelling yourself, threatening them, be violent to them, cut off their escape route, or get right up in their personal space.  

Other ideas?  Please reblog and add more.  The more the merrier.

actuallyclintbarton:

actuallyclintbarton:

lowspark13:

I really want to start communicating through text more often, except it wouldn’t make me more comfortable since I can barely stand reading things I’ve written. It gives me the same feeling i get when I listen to my voice on a tape recorder.

Also I’ve…

Yeah I mean. ASL would be nice and helpful, but not necessarily any more helpful than AAC. It’s…

Okay to be perfectly honest? Part of it is I don’t feel like I deserve it but most of it is not even that I’m afraid to use it but I am petrified of using it and then someone who saw me use it hearing me talk with Birdie or someone I’m comfortable talking with at the time and judging me for it.

Which is stupid because it’s not just for completely 100% 24/7 nonverbal people and I know that, and usually I couldn’t give a rats ass what some random person would think, but I’m honestly kind of afraid some off-their-gourd allistic is gonna start something when I’m least capable of handling it.

At least with ASL I can just say that I’m hard of hearing and it’s easier in louder spaces to sign sometimes. (Which would both be and not be a lie).

And that is a compromise and it’s OKAY to compromise and do what’s most likely to cause you the minimum of stress which INCLUDES avoiding stupid questions by random strangers. Okay, this probably doesn’t connect (in my head, it does, but that doesn’t always translate), but here goes. I use the word lesbian to refer to myself. It encompasses the fact that I’m in a long-term,committed monogamous relationship with a woman. People sort of get it. It’s shorthand. But honestly? I don’t consider myself a lesbian. I’m ambivalent about the word bisexual, though that’s closer to the mark. Queer probably comes closest, because it’s a general term. The reality is ‘I fall in love with people’ tends to result in a hell of a lot of blank looks, confusion, and demands for clarification, even in the queer community. If I added ‘sometimes I like sex, sometimes I just want cuddles and scritches and petting, and sometimes I really don’t want to be touched at all’, there would be even more confusion. So I use lesbian even though I don’t really click with it because it gives people a label they can understand (even if they’re homophobic, they know what a lesbian is), and they’re happy that they’ve categorised me and can move on.

The point I’m making is this – people, even people who work with autistic people, even some autistic people themselves, JUST DON’T GET that sometimes, some autistic people can’t use verbal language all the time, or at times, it’s so stressful and hard it’s exhausting, or leads us into a meltdown. And to explain all that, when you’re on the edge of a meltdown or exhaustion, is TOO MUCH. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to be too exhausted to be the perfect information resource/soapbox advocate. You’re allowed to think of your autistic manifestations as being disabling. That doesn’t make you a bad autistic person. And if using ASL, or home sign, or signed english means you can use the excuse, “I’m Deaf/HoH, and it’s easier to sign in this situation/when I’m tired/when I’m having trouble keeping up”, then that’s fine, even if the real reason you’re signing isn’t completely to do with the fact that you’re Deaf/HoH. YOU DON’T HAVE TO JUSTIFY YOURSELF HONESTLY AND COMPLETELY. You are under no obligation to. And if the short explanation you give isn’t enough for them to accept and leave you alone, then they’re a rude asshole anyway.

actuallyclintbarton:

lowspark13:

I really want to start communicating through text more often, except it wouldn’t make me more comfortable since I can barely stand reading things I’ve written. It gives me the same feeling i get when I listen to my voice on a tape recorder.

Also I’ve never used AAC and I don’t think explaining why I “suddenly” can’t talk would work out very well. I’ve never gone completely non-verbal;I can always mange to force out the words.

I have been thinking about trying to get my wife and I into an ASL class so I don’t have to always talk but I don’t have to rely on text/having my phone or laptop on me.

Plus I can’t hear well anyway so it’d be plenty helpful for loud places or when her voice isn’t very loud.

(Though tbf I have not discussed this with her yet as it’s not currently a viable option due to money – she might not want to.)

I totally understand though – I’ve ALLOWED myself to go fully nonverbal like. Once. Because I was safe and with people who understood. I feel like I’m almost not allowed to use AAC since I can almost always force words out if I need to.

AAC is for everyone, but if you feel ASL is going to be more accessible for you, then, by all means, go for it. Learning another language is never a bad thing.

I often wish I learnt more Auslan. We had a Deaf class at my infants school, but the kid I bonded best with was Shannon, and his hearing with aids was good enough that he hardly used it and got mainstreamed with the rest of us kids by second grade. Now all I remember is how to fingerspell the alphabet.