Color Communication Badges are an accommodation to support social interaction for people with a variety of disabilities and communication needs. Color communication badges were first developed by Autism Network International, and popularized by the Autistic community in Autistic spaces and conferences.

Color Communication Badges offer those who use them an opportunity to communicate explicitly the degree to which they want to participate in new social interactions and with who. They offer a universally designed way of making a conference, university, event or other space more accessible to those who may not find typical nonverbal social cues accessible. Many non-disabled people report that this system also benefits them too.

Color Communication Badges

Chapter 11 of  NeuroTribes, In Autistic Space, tells of the advent of interaction badges (also called color communication badges) on the ANI-L list in 1995 and at the first Autreat in 1996.

Interaction badges are used at autistic conferences and are showing up at tech, sci-fi, fantasy, comic, and fandom cons.

We rarely go to conferences because they induce extreme sensory overwhelm. Cons are overwhelming sensory spaces–often with no places to escape. Adjusting to them takes time. During that adjustment, social and verbal interaction are beyond us. We’re busy managing a flood. Interaction badges would help quiet edge walkers like ourselves. We’d love to see more WordCamps try them. WordCamp Philly used interaction badges at their 2017 event. Accounts on social media suggest it went well.

Interaction badges allow you to roam conference hallways in peace. They allow you to get back to your hotel room after a long day of socializing without further interaction. Set your badge to red to let folks know you are offline for interaction.

@socksfur

Reply to @socksfur A follow-up to an old video, talking about accessibility at furcons! for @north_omaha_cat_lady #autism #furry #furcon

♬ original sound – SocksFur

Interaction badges are also helpful for classrooms, coworking spaces, and other collaborative environments where zone workers need to be left alone to maintain high-memory flow states.

They also found out that the worst time to be interrupted is when you have the highest memory load. The silver lining of being interrupted comes into play when the person can either suspend their working state or reach a “good breakpoint” —this way the impact can be reduced. However, transitioning from a high memory state to a low memory state takes about seven minutes, so the interruption is (almost) never without consequences.

And it’s gone —The true cost of interruptions

Our community uses these badges in our learning space and at our events.

Interaction badges are useful tools. Their red, yellow, green communication indicators map to our cave, campfire, and watering hole moods. The cave, campfire, watering hole and red, yellow, green reductions are a useful starting place when designing for neurological pluralism, intermittent collaboration, and classroom UX.

Get started with interaction badges with this template. We recommend against using badge stickers, as interaction status is fluid and can change over the course of a conference or class. Make your interaction badge status cards flippable or swappable.

Interaction badges pair well with bodymind affirmations. Use them both for your conferences and classes.

I believe we should all move in our space in whatever way is most comfortable for our bodyminds.

Please use this space as you need or prefer.

Sit in chairs or on the floor, pace, lie on the floor, rock, flap, spin, move around, come in and out of the room.

This is an invitation for you to consider what your bodymind needs to be as comfortable as possible in this moment.

This is an invitation to remind yourself to remember and to affirm that your bodymind has needs and that those needs deserve to be met, that your bodymind is valuable and worthy, that you deserve to be here, …, to belong.

Against Ableism & White Supremacy: Disability Justice is Our Liberation – YouTube

I know that I myself could not sit still in a room like this for even 15 seconds. So if you are like me and you need to take a break during my presentation, that’s all good. You need to go to the back of the room and pace back and forth, I won’t be offended. You need to leave the room, it’s all good. I myself may wander off in the middle of my presentation, and you all will be accepting, inclusive, and accommodating of that for sure. (Laughter) But, hey, you know what, this is your time.

Lab School Lecture Series – Jonathan Mooney – YouTube

The quotes and resources below discuss the origins, use, and benefits of interaction badges.

I found that interaction badges make a huge difference with autistic access.

A photograph (description below) of my interaction…

“Opportunity but not pressure” is a core principle for all Autreat activities: attendance at presentations, informal discussions that are held in the evenings, swimming and other recreational activities, socializing, meals (people who prefer to make their own meal arrangements are able to register for Autreat without paying for Autreat meals), on-site lodging (people who prefer to stay at an off-site hotel can register for Autreat at a commuter rate)—all participation is purely voluntary.

Freedom from pressures and expectations

For some autistic people attending Autreat, the sudden absence of pressures and expectations to behave in certain ways can be quite disorienting at first. NT people are often disoriented as well, and may experience culture shock. One NT attendee described feeling unsure of how to behave and how to relate to people, confused about how to interpret other people’s behavior, and anxious that he might offend people without realizing it (personal communication). In other words, he was able to experience at Autreat some of the same social confusion and discomfort that autistic people frequently experience in NT society. While this can be somewhat disturbing, a number of NT people have reported that it was a valuable experience that helped them to better understand what autistic people go through on a daily basis.

The absence of any expectation or pressure to socialize, and the knowledge that they’re free to withdraw at any time, seem to free many autistic people to want to socialize.”

History of ANI via Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking

Color Communication Badges are an accommodation to support social interaction for people with a variety of disabilities and communication needs. Color communication badges were first developed by Autism Network International, and popularized by the Autistic community in Autistic spaces and conferences.

Color Communication Badges offer those who use them an opportunity to communicate explicitly the degree to which they want to participate in new social interactions and with who. They offer a universally designed way of making a conference, university, event or other space more accessible to those who may not find typical nonverbal social cues accessible. Many non-disabled people report that this system also benefits them too.

Color Communication Badges | Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Color Communication Badges are a system which were first developed in Autistic spaces and conferences. They help people tell everyone who can see their badge about their communication preferences.

A color communication badge is a name tag holder that can pin or clip onto clothing. In the name tag holder there are three cards: one green card that says “GREEN”, one yellow card that says “YELLOW”, and one red card that says “RED.”

The card that is currently visible is the active card; the other two are hidden behind the first one, accessible to the person if they should need them.

Showing a green badge means that the person is actively seeking communication; they have trouble initiating conversations, but want to be approached by people who are interested in talking.

Showing a yellow badge means that the person only wants to talk to people they recognize, not by strangers or people they only know from the Internet. The badge-wearer might approach strangers to talk, and that is okay; the approached people are welcome to talk back to them in that case. But unless you have already met the person face-to-face, you should not approach them to talk.

Showing a red badge means that the person probably does not want to talk to anyone, or only wants to talk to a few people. The person might approach others to talk, and that is okay; the approached people are welcome to talk back GREEN YELLOW RED to them in that case. But unless you have been told already by the badge-wearer that you are on their “red list”, you should not approach them to talk.

Color communication badges are a good aid because they allow people to express their current communication preference quickly, nonverbally, and simply – people can change what card is showing if their preference changes. They are a good way to prevent situations where someone is caught in a social situation they do not want to be in, or situations where someone wants to talk but can’t initiate.

Color Communication Badges

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 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.

Source: Autieble Sam

A lot of people are, understandably, quite concerned about the heavy social demands of being in a large group for several days. There is no requirement to socialise at all, and there will be no implicit or explicit disapproval of those who choose not to interact with others. There is coloured badge system for indicating whether you would like to socialise or not.

• No initiation – Red – Please do not initiate any interaction with me.
• Prior Permission – Yellow – Please do not initiate unless I have already given you permission to approach me on a yellow badge.
• Please initiate – Green – I would like to socialise, but I have difficulty initiating. Please initiate with me.
• Neutral – White (or no badge) – I am able to regulate my own interaction.

People who do not wish to be in any photographs or video may wear a black circle.

Important: It is not necessary to use any badge at all. If you are okay with approaching others, and with others approaching you (even if you do not wish to interact, but are comfortable saying so), then there is no need to use a coloured badge. If green is used as a default for everyone who wishes to interact, whether they can initiate or not, then it is less meaningful for those who have difficulty initiating and rely on others to approach them.

Source: Autscape: Autistic needs

I’ve wished, pretty much since I learned about them, that the rest of the world would implement Color Communication Badges, especially for events like conferences where so much emphasis of the benefit is placed on the face-to-face connections: in other words, the socializing – that thing I can’t do. My dear friend, Nightengale, made a wonderful argument in her most recent post about why we need to introduce the badges into schools. Because what we expect people to want isn’t necessarily the same as what they do want, and the first step in advocacy is ask-vocacy: ask the person.

That got me thinking about the benefit of implementing Color Communication Badges in my classroom, not just for my students but for myself as well. There’s pretty much nothing a student can do in my classroom that will bother me, or prevent learning from happening, but there are 4 little words that can throw off an entire lesson or even an entire day:

“Do you have a minute?”

The unwritten answer to this question, of course, is “yes.” I work very hard to be flexible and accessible for collaboration. It’s worked. It’s worked a little too well, to the point where people think it’s okay to interrupt me in the middle of lessons. But the fact remains that, a lot of the time, I don’t have a minute. I’m with a student or group; I’m mentally (sometimes physically) organizing the next lesson; or I’m taking a much needed breather so I can be “on” again in a minute.

The problem is, once I’ve explained that, no, now is not a good time (because it would be rude to just ignore you) I’ve already lost that focus so I might as well recoup my losses and go down the rabbit hole on whatever you wanted “a minute” about. Maybe it will be useful. So I have acquired a reputation of being always accessible that is actually counterproductive to the way my brain works.

Source: Teaching and Learning With Disabilities: Do You Have a Minute?

So it could be a green badge that says ‘Please initiate’ and that’s saying that you like to socialise but you have some difficulty initiating communication, so you’d like other people to start talking to you. You can have a yellow badge that says ‘Please only talk to me if I’ve given you my prior permission’ so – that’s ‘start talking to me’ these are very clearly about initiating contact, and I’m sure that Martijn or Yo can talk about how after years of running Autscape now, certain things have been improved and streamlined or clarified. There’s also a red badge that just asks people not to initiate with them. So if they start talking to you, you can talk back. But it allows people who find it very stressful to have social interactions or are currently very overloaded and don’t want to.

I mean I flip between different badge colours depending on what’s happening. They’re very very helpful for access and that’s not something I’ve seen at any local group before. Would you like to talk about that kind of designed in access?

Yo: It’s actually been copied quite widely, as I think Martijn said. yes, it was an Autreat concept originally. Autscape has taken it and developed it from originally interaction-control badges into initiation badges because of the experience of Autscape illustrated that some clarification was needed.

And now the concept has been extremely widely copied included by NT groups and conferences where autistics are intended to be present. And certainly, to the best of my knowledge, Autscape has deliberately allowed it to be widely copied in the interest of autistics.

Episode 3: Autistic Spaces, Autistic Flappy Hour

As an autistic person, I can think of lots of reason why this child might have preferred to be sitting alone. His other option might have been sitting with bullies, which was my only other option at his age. Of course, the adults didn’t see the kids talking to me as bullies. They saw them as nice. Nice people peppering me with questions about why I did all the things I did differently than everyone else, from my food, my wardrobe and my vocabulary. Alone was certainly preferable to that, and if this child is being bullied, that should be addressed.

But there are other reasons for a person, any person but most specifically, an autistic person, to seek solitude. Perhaps the only choices of people to talk with have such vastly different interests there would be no topic of conversation. Perhaps the sound of others chewing food is distressing. Perhaps one just needs some time to recharge and think, without having to process language and social cues.

Karla Fisher has a great visual she uses for IEP advocacy called “Our breaks are not like NT breaks.” She points out that, for an autistic person, lunch and recess can be the most stressful times of the day.

On a regular basis at work, I hear about children who are alone at lunch and recess, from their worried parents. I always ask the child what they like to do at those times. Sometimes I hear stories of wanting to play but being excluded. Often I hear stories of not being able to find someone who wants to play or do similar things. And then I hear about the child who prefers to spend recess looking for rocks – alone. It always seems I am the first person to have ever asked the question.

The autistic community has a solution for this, for autistic events. They are Color Communication Badges. With green displayed, the message is to approach. With yellow, only known people are welcomed. With red displayed, the wearer is to be left alone except in direst emergency. This makes it easy at autistic events, to know if a person sitting alone would relish or loathe company.

Why don’t we have something like that at schools? Color badges or seat markers or perhaps a choice chart the child can use in class before recess.

I (,) Object – Nightengale of Samarkand

Autistic people created fandom. We built this city. Don’t exclude us from conferences.