You don’t want to make communication an elite thing. And I think that’s really a lot of what punk was about — a hands on, do what you want, of the people type of a thing.
Anita Smith, Fifth Column, Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution
“Written communication is the great social equalizer.” It allowed me to participate and be a part of things bigger than myself. As I reflect on my life and career in light of a mid-life autism diagnosis, I realize how much I was driven by the desire and need for written communication. I became an engineer who helped build the infrastructure that would allow me to socialize with the written rather than the spoken word. Consciously and unconsciously, I helped create technologies and culture that suited my neurotype.
I’m in good company.
- Technology, Text, and Alternative Socialization
- Backchannels
- Online Written Communication and Autistic Community
- Anything but the Phone!
- Writing is the path to power for those born without power.
- The Future Is Text: The Universal Interface
- Text Augments All Other Media
- A Workflow-Focused Approach to Writing Offers a Pathway to Agency, Creativity, and Confidence
- Disabled ways of languaging are primarily about modality.
- Typed Words, Loud Voices
- Let’s Augment Everybody, Let’s Leave No Mind Behind
- Bring the Backchannel Forward
- Main Takeaways
Technology, Text, and Alternative Socialization
Asperger may have been the first clinician to notice that his patients’ imaginations occasionally anticipated developments in science by decades, forcing him to amend his statement that the interests of his little professors were “remote” from real-world concerns. But his joking suggestion that the designers of spaceships themselves must be autistic also turned out to be prescient.
Tommy the Space Child was not the only member of Asperger’s forgotten tribe to turn his youthful obsession with science fiction into a career in science. For many people on the spectrum in the years when they were still invisible to medicine, science fiction fandom provided a community where they finally felt like savvy natives after years of being bullied and abused by their peers for seeming naïve, awkward, and clueless. Another community that enabled autistic people to make the most of their natural strengths in the early and mid-twentieth century was amateur radio. By routing around the face-to-face interactions they found so daunting, even people who found it nearly impossible to communicate through speech were able to reach out to kindred spirits, find potential mentors, and gain the skills and confidence they needed to become productive members of society.
Amazingly, both of these communities were launched by the same man who was likely on the autism spectrum himself: a visionary entrepreneur named Hugo Gernsback, who foresaw the decentralized, intimately interconnected nature of twenty-first-century society before nearly anyone else with the help of his equally eccentric friend, the prolific inventor Nikola Tesla. Along the way, Gernsback and Tesla anticipated the development of television, online news, computerized dating services, videophones, and many other conveniences that we take for granted a century later.
It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential. For success, the necessary ingredient may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world, from the simply practical, an ability to re-think a subject with originality so as to create in new untrodden ways.
The revenge of the nerds was taking shape as a society in which anyone who had access to a computer and a modem could feel less disabled by the limitations of space and time.
The kids formerly ridiculed as nerds and brainiacs have grown up to become the architects of our future.
One day someone will write a history of the Internet, in which that great series of tubes will emerge as one long chain of inventions not just geared to helping people connect in more ways, but rather, to help more and more types of people communicate just as nimbly as anyone else. But for the story here, the most crucial piece in the puzzle is this: Disability is an engine of innovation simply because no matter what their limitations, humans have such a relentless drive to communicate that they’ll invent new ways to do so, in spite of everything.
You could describe this in that old cliche that necessity breeds invention. But a more accurate interpretation is that in empathizing with others, we create things that we might never have created ourselves. We see past the specifics of what we know, to experiences that might actually be universal.
Backchannels
A useful artifact of this fascination for technology, text, and alternative socialization is the rise of backchannels.
Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside the primary group activity or live spoken remarks. The term was coined in the field of linguistics to describe listeners’ behaviours during verbal communication. (See Backchannel (linguistics).)
The term “backchannel” generally refers to online conversation about the conference topic or speaker. Occasionally backchannel provides audience members a chance to fact-check the presentation.
Source: Backchannel – Wikipedia
Both kids at school and adults at work, regardless of neurotype, benefit from backchannels. “This kind of technology supports the shy user, the user with speech issues, the user having trouble with the English Language, the user who’d rather be able to think through and even edit a statement or question before asking it.“
Online Written Communication and Autistic Community
Backchannels especially support autistic people. “Online communication for autistics has been compared to sign language for the deaf. Online, we are able to participate as equals. Our disability is often invisible and we are treated like humans. It provides much needed human contact otherwise denied us.” “Online communication is a valid accommodation for the social disability that comes with being Autistic. We need online interaction.” “Thin slice studies showed that people prejudge us harshly in just micro-seconds of seeing or hearing us (though we fare better than neurotypical subjects when people only see our written words).“
ANI launched its online list, ANI-L, in 1994. Like a specialized ecological niche, ANI-L had acted as an incubator for Autistic culture, accelerating its evolution. In 1996, a computer programmer in the Netherlands named Martijn Dekker set up a list called Independent Living on the Autism Spectrum, or InLv. People with dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, and a myriad of other conditions (christened “cousins” in the early days of ANI) were also welcome to join the list. InLv was another nutrient-rich tide pool that accelerated the evolution of autistic culture. The collective ethos of InLv, said writer and list member Harvey Blume in the New York Times in 1997, was “neurological pluralism.” He was the first mainstream journalist to pick up on the significance of online communities for people with neurological differences. “The impact of the Internet on autistics,” Blume predicted, “may one day be compared in magnitude to the spread of sign language among the deaf.”
The neurodiversity movement: Autism is a minority group. NeuroTribes excerpt.
Until one day… you find a whole world of people who understand.
We were no longer alone.
Source: 7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture | The Aspergian | A Neurodivergent Collective
One could make the argument that autistic people created the very computer environment autistic people are most comfortable in.
In fact, there is pretty good evidence that most of the science, technology, and arts you enjoy are the products of autistic minds.
Source: Welcome to the World Autism Made – An Intense World
I’m a Disabled Teenager, and Social Media Is My Lifeline – The New York Times
Anything but the Phone!
Phones are very stressful. ‘Call if you have a problem’ is an inaccessible gauntlet for me and many others. If you work with neurodivergent kids, keep in mind that their parents are likely neurodivergent too. Most of the autistic parents “you encounter will not be diagnosed, and may indeed be oblivious to their own social and communication difficulties. By making your systems and processes more adapted to the needs of autistic mothers, you will be supporting not only undiagnosed mothers (and fathers) but other adults with additional needs.“
Considering that autism professionals must know how we autistics struggle with verbal communications, it is troubling how few willingly offer alternatives. My life, and my ability to advocate for my son, has been immeasurably improved through the use of email.
If you do one thing to improve your service, please provide your email address and show willing to communicate in this format. I can think of no reason to withhold email addresses, and am not sure what’s stopping you.
When AMASE conducted a survey about the mental health of autistic people around Scotland, we found that many had been excluded by such simple things as practices insisting on telephone contact
Fergus Murray: Why ‘nothing about us without us’ should be an Autism policy principle | CommonSpace
There’s a lot of misunderstanding about autistic people, and phone calls.
Many autistic people are not always able to speak, or may not be able to speak at all.
Unfortunately, not a lot of people know this. So there can be major difficulties with people misunderstanding what’s happening.
Lots of autistic people can only sometimes use phones. It’s a major barrier to healthcare, to job success, to getting basic services and basic human rights. It’s great when companies and organisations know the law, want to work with us, and create different ways to interact. Text. Email. Webchat. Timed called with a known person. Anything that works for us as individuals.
Source: Ann’s Autism Blog: Autistic people and phone calls
Quantitative data indicated that email ranked highly when accessing services, seeking customer support and communicating about research. When communicating with family, friends, in employment and in education, both face-to-face and written modes (email or text message) were preferred. In the qualitative data, four main themes were identified: Not the Phone, Written Communication, Masking versus Autistic Communication and Avoiding Communication. There is a clear message that mode of communication can be either enabling or disabling for autistic people. A reliance on phone calls can create barriers to access, yet the option to adopt written forms of communication can improve accessibility. For known connections, the preference for face-to-face communication is dependent upon how close and accepting the relationship is.
When contacting unknown people or organisations, we found that generally email was preferred, and phone calls were very unpopular. However, for friends, family and people they felt comfortable with, they preferred both face-to-face and written forms of communication (e.g. email and text message).
Implications for practice, research or policy
The findings suggest that services should move away from a reliance on phone calls for communication. They should make sure that access to support is not dependent on the phone, and instead offer written options such as email and live messaging which are more accessible. Future research should investigate the impact of COVID-19 on autistic people’s communication preferences, as video calling has become much more commonly used and potentially combines benefits and challenges of other modes discussed in this article.
‘Anything but the phone!’: Communication mode preferences in the autism community – Philippa L Howard, Felicity Sedgewick, 2021
The sound of the phone ringing can immediately evoke anxiety for some people, especially for autistic people and people with anxiety. If the call hasn’t been agreed in advance, many of us find ourselves simply unable to answer it and let it go to voicemail. Why is this?
Source: Why Phone Calls Can be Incredibly Difficult for Autistic People and People with Anxiety
The highest-rated barriers by autistic adults were deciding if symptoms warrant a GP visit (72%), difficulty making appointments by telephone (62%), not feeling understood (56%), difficulty communicating with their doctor (53%) and the waiting room environment (51%). Autistic adults reported a preference for online or text-based appointment booking, facility to email in advance the reason for consultation, the first or last clinic appointment and a quiet place to wait.
Autistic respondents reported avoiding the telephone (78%), voicemail (61%) and face-to-face verbal communication (30%). Forty one per cent reported that it is ‘easier for me to communicate in writing’ (table 2).
While most respondents (67% vs 65%) reported booking an appointment online would facilitate access, autistic patients selected a need to ‘email my doctor in advance with a description of the issue I need to discuss’ (62%), ‘wait in a quiet place or outside until my turn’ (56%) and ‘book an appointment by text’ (41%).
Difficulty using the telephone to book an appointment was significantly associated with all adverse outcomes apart from having to undergo more extensive treatment or surgery than if they had attended sooner.
Barriers to healthcare and self-reported adverse outcomes for autistic adults: a cross-sectional study | BMJ Open
Writing is the path to power for those born without power.
Writing is too important because, though forms and structures will differ, writing is the path to power for those born without power. This importance lies not in how to write a “five‐paragraph essay” or a “compare and contrast” book review but in the capability to clearly communicate visions both personal and collaborative. Whether the work is a tweet that generates action when that is needed, or a text message to an employer, or the ability to convince others in the political realm, or the expression of one’s identity in a form that evokes empathy in those without similar experience, “communicating” “well” is a social leveler of supreme importance.
Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools.
In both cases, methodology become less important than process. Our students read on paper, or through audio books, or through text‐to‐speech, or by watching video, or by seeing theater – or by observing their world. They write with pens, keyboards large and small, touchscreens, or by dictating to their phones or computers, or by recording audio, or by making videos, or by writing plays or creating art, or playing music. We do not limit the work by attacking those with disabilities or even inabilities – or even other preferences, because that robs children of both important influences and of their individual voices. Multiplicities are an intention: We build the best collaboration, the deepest learning, when we expand the opportunities for complex vision.
Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools.
Thus we begin by moving the teaching of writing from the training of a specific skill set toward an interpersonal art form that flows from students and builds communities. Then, through the reimagining of teaching places into “learning spaces,” we craft “studios” where all the technologies of school – time, space, tools, pedagogies – liberate and inspire rather than deliver and test. Then, using those recrafted technologies, we allow communication learning to flow.
Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools.
The Future Is Text: The Universal Interface
Text and reading have never been as pervasive and central as today. We live in a stream of digital revolutions pushing reading at the centre of our lives and activities. The result is the emergence of a new role for text as the all-purpose interface. This trend leads to a future made of text, where everything is mediated by text and in which everybody is directly and indirectly involved in the production and consumption of more text. The production of text is already collectively amplified, for instance, considering as texts receipts, reports, manuals, frequently asked questions, to-do lists, memos, contracts, chats, tags, notes, descriptions, emails, invitations, calendar appointments and so on. Therefore, the Future Of Text lies in the re-definition of text “craftsmanship”, focused on enabling and facilitating a text-mediated access and interaction with the relationships, functions and actors of the reality we live in.
The Future Is Text: The Universal Interface, The Future of Text
These words from @stevesilberman inspire me to think that we should never assume likewise that being “articulate”, “fluent”, or able to speak and to write “correctly”, or simply able to read and to write equals intelligence or learning.
@ecomentario
The Future Of Text lies in the re-definition of text “craftsmanship”, focused on enabling and facilitating a text-mediated access and interaction with the relationships, functions and actors of the reality we live in.
The Future Is Text: The Universal Interface, The Future of Text
Text Augments All Other Media
Unfortunately this is a familiar experience for me and many other blind and partially sighted people. When using my phone I often get stared at, tutted at, and have even experienced several abusive comments about faking my blindness.
What they don’t realise is that I’m using several of the built in accessibility features to enlarge the text, zoom apps, and even have my phone read out information to me.
People think I’m faking my blindness because I use a phone – but it’s other people’s prejudice that’s the problem
A Workflow-Focused Approach to Writing Offers a Pathway to Agency, Creativity, and Confidence
Ultimately, we argue that a workflow-focused approach to writing offers a pathway to agency, creativity, and confidence with computing-a spirit that is very much in line with the lineage of digital and multimodal work in composition studies.
Writing Workflows | Introduction
I’m learning a lot about myself since my ADHD and autism diagnoses. One of the things I’m learning is that a lot of my ways of working are actually disability hacks: as it turns out a LOT of my people are very visual and a LOT of my people have poor working memory. Instead of trying to change myself to fit the ways of working I think I should have, because other people, I should maybe instead celebrate that I have, by trial and error and very little help or encouragement from anyone, kluged my way into some best practices for my particular career and set of challenges. I should congratulate myself on the self-knowledge that got me to a place that I’ve devised a whole workflow that minimizes the disabling effects of my particular forms of neurodivergence and allows me to shine. (para. 5)
Writing Workflows | Introduction
Morrison’s post suggests that workflows can be an inclusive and productive concept-that we have much to gain by considering how we work, what tools we work with, and how those preferences can help us think beyond a set of default, invisible, or unstated norms.
Writing Workflows | Introduction
Disabled ways of languaging are primarily about modality.
Crip linguistics frames language as a form of care work where we work collectively to provide access and co-construct meaning.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: Imaging a Crip Linguistics
Disabled ways of languaging are primarily about modality.
Crip Linguistics Intro
Crip languaging incorporates practices of access intimacy, adaptions of technology, and relationality. To sum up, disabled people do really cool things with language if people would pay attention.
View of Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: A Crip Linguistics Manifesto
If you are a dyslexic person or the parent of a dyslexic child, I recommend that you allow technology to become your new best friend.
The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan
I am introducing these terms to address an underlying bias in our schools: that eye reading is the only form of reading. You can help move the needle on this limited assumption by using the terms eye reading, ear reading, and finger reading yourself and explaining them to your child.
…we must question what we are taught is the “normal” way to do things, and instead integrate multiple ways for our children to access information.
The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan: A Blueprint for Renewing Your Child’s Confidence and Love of Learning
Mia Mingus in Hamraie and Fritsch (2019) describe access intimacy as a “crip relational practice produced when interdependence informs the making of access” (p.14). As such, interdependent ways of languaging, like augmented speech, do not appeal to many abled people. For example, as Mackay’s (2003) work with aphasia patients showed, the patients were viewed as incompetent because of their voicelessness. Given an acceptance of interdependence and care work in languaging via crip time, the patients would be viewed as competent (Rossetti et al., 2008).
Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: A Crip Linguistics Manifesto | Journal of Critical Study of Communication and Disability
One lesson from crip languaging is the idea of interdependence and forms of access intimacy through the discourse process.
View of Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: A Crip Linguistics Manifesto
People use languages in different ways. Some people use language to help find other people like them. Many people use language in specific ways because of how their body and mind work. Sometimes a person’s environment and material conditions forces them to use language in a certain way. However, when someone languages outside of what people think is normal, others can think that they are bad with language or are not as smart or are broken. We are trying to point out that no one is actually ‘bad with language.’ Our goal with this paper is to help people understand that no language is bad. It is okay to want to change your own language use if it will make you feel better. But no one should make you feel bad about your language. We need a bigger and more flexible understanding of what language is and what it communicates about a bodymind’s capacity.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: Imaging a Crip Linguistics
We are trying to point out that no one is actually ‘bad with language.’ Our goal with this paper is to help people understand that no language is bad.
PsyArXiv Preprints | Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: Imaging a Crip Linguistics
Typed Words, Loud Voices
Another way that typing has helped me is with my blog. I am able to say things, especially about my feelings that I cannot get out through my mouth. Sometimes, it can take weeks to get it out even by typing, but it does come. If I was trying to speak, it would never come out. I have noticed that when I am upset about something, if I blog about it as soon as possible, I am able to get my real feelings and frustrations out. This is a new and helpful thing. It is helping me to become a better advocate for others and myself. The words are starting to come out through the keyboard, but it has to be done as soon as possible, otherwise the words disappear. I also have to be careful because certain people may read what I write and get worried (this has happened even though there is no reason to be). I am tempted to start another blog but keep it anonymous so that I can say whatever I need to say. It would be interesting to see what would happen if I had that freedom. Something I have definitely never had with the spoken word.
Typed Words, Loud Voices is written by a coalition of writers who type to talk and believe it is neither logical nor fair that some people should be expected to prove themselves every time they have something to say. Read our arguments and hear us. Help us change the world.
I type to talk. Without typing I have no voice to tell you I am smart. I spell my thoughts because I cannot speak with my mouth. Thoughts remain imprisoned in my mind escaping only through my finger on a letterboard or keyboard. I tell of my experiences of being autistic in my writing and blog. Without typing I am misunderstood as retarded and unteachable. You cannot tell from my exterior that I am following everything you say. Understanding comes easy to me.
Fingers are better communicators. They’re just harder to be listened to if you’re in the same location. Sometimes this isn’t used because speech is so much faster, but the fingers give so much more detail, phrase in so much more depth, get tied up so much less. Fingers don’t get lost in their own sentences.
Even those who can always make words with their mouths often find typing a more eloquent and less stressful means of communicating than speech. No one should feel that they have to prove they are “disabled enough” to deserve the supports that will make their lives easier, happier, and more productive. Increasing my ability to communicate with others has filled me with so much hope and joy. I want everyone to feel that way. I want everyone to be heard. Typed voices are a celebration of communication and connection. Listen to them and rejoice. The clicking of the keyboard is the song of life unfolding.
Typed Words, Loud Voices: A Collection – Autonomous Press
Let’s Augment Everybody, Let’s Leave No Mind Behind
Digital communication and collaboration technologies enable NeurodiVentures to act as a catalyst for trusted collaboration between groups.
Autistic people – The cultural immune system of human societies | Autistic Collaboration
Using hyperlinking and contextual computing, we take the written word (and the underlying paradigm about how we work on a computer) from one dimension and convert it to three dimensions.
It is the way for computers to truly serve the role as “bicycles for the mind“.
The Growing Movement for Hyperlinking and Contextual Computing
My hope for the Future Of Text is that, as in the past, it will adapt to us as we adapt to it. That it will bring the body—of writer and reader—back into view in all its difference and complexity.
Embodying Text, The Future of Text
“I’ve had a fair number of kids that were traditionally disengaged— The most common complaint: ‘I don’t like to write, so I don’t like school.’ When I said, ‘Well, you can type it. You don’t have to write; you can type. And you can use the spell checker, and you can look up words.’ All of the sudden they say, ‘Oh, OK. I’ll do that.’”
“If you’re not a good writer, sitting and writing on a piece of paper is hard. But when they have a computer that can help with spelling, and with grammar, and they can go online and look up words and the pronunciation, and they can hear how it’s said, and they can write it down correctly. Now they feel good about themselves because they’re not getting a paper back with a thousand red marks all over it, correcting grammar and spelling that they don’t necessarily understand in the first place.”
Reisinger, Charlie (2016-09-29). The Open Schoolhouse: Building a Technology Program to Transform Learning and Empower Students. Kindle Edition.
Reisinger, Charlie (2016-09-29). The Open Schoolhouse: Building a Technology Program to Transform Learning and Empower Students. Kindle Edition.
He was a slow typist. A painfully slow typist. And yet, his typing was about three times as fast as his handwriting, and, in the end there was a perfectly completed job application.
SpeEdChange: Toolbelt Theory for Everyone
We asked our building leadership teams, and we asked those Principals and Assistant Principals to ask their teachers, to experience a bit of “writing for empathy.” Medical educators have discovered that when doctors write from the point of view of their patients, empathy increases and the quality of care increases. We thought it might be worth seeing if this applied to our educators as well.
So we began, and told them not to be limited by structure – choose any writing mode you’d like – or grammar or spelling or where or how to write – on the floor, standing up, on paper, on phone, on computer – to just find the emotional path and write.
We so often stop our students from writing… we tell them that everything from how they sit to how they spell is more important than communication… and we thus raise children who hate writing.
This became powerful. People not only chose every and any place to write, every and any device to write on, they chose modes from poetry to an email exchange between high school students in class, from narrative to internal monologue to dialogue in the corridor. From tweet and text to song.
It is remarkable what happens when you stop telling people how to write and start encouraging them to write.
“Our kindergartners and first graders are natural writers,” one principal said, “and then we tell them to stop and worry about handwriting and spelling and punctuation, and they never really write again.”
SpeEdChange: Writing for Empathy
It is our responsibility to provide every learner with real learning space choices based on task-based and physical comfort-based needs, which not only allow their cognitive energy to be focused on learning but helps students to develop the contemporary skills needed to alter and use spaces to initiate and accomplish collaborative and individual work. This includes the availability of multiple communication tools and contemporary technologies as well as assisting students in understanding and creating a variety of learning products which demonstrate student choices in curriculum, task, technologies, and media.
No child within the Albemarle County Public Schools should need a label or prescription in order to access the tools of learning or environments they need. Within the constraints of other laws (in particular, copyright) we will offer alternative representations of information, multiple tools, and a variety of instructional strategies to provide access for all learners to acquire lifelong learning competencies and the knowledge and skills specified in curricular standards. We will create classroom cultures that fully embrace differentiation of instruction, student work, and assessment based upon individual learners’ needs and capabilities. We will apply contemporary learning science to create accessible entry points for all students in our learning environments; and which support students in learning how to make technology choices to overcome disabilities and inabilities, and to leverage preferences and capabilities.
Seven Pathways
Let’s augment everybody, let’s leave no mind behind.
The Future of Text
Bring the Backchannel Forward
Bring the backchannel forward. Embrace written communication as the great equalizer. Backchannels accommodate neurological pluralism while fostering the serendipity of networks. Backchannels are vital parts of the internal networks that allow us to tap into not just “a diversity of voices, but a diversity and divergence of thinking and ideas.” Build such networks in your school with indie ed-tech. Look to distributed work for ways to integrate backchannels into education and workplace cultures.
Excerpted below are selections from teachers, tech workers, and autistic people on the benefits of backchannels.
A backchannel is a separate, often text-based, discussion students engage in while they’re receiving information via a lecture, a movie, a television show, or a PowerPoint presentation. Students use a digital device to participate in a behind-the-scenes chat so as not to disturb others trying to listen.
Backchannels provide the perfect outlet for students who have something to say but refuse to open up in class discussions. When everyone participates in the conversation, no one feels singled out. As a result, inhibitions about sharing decrease and the courage to speak up increases. Plus, when everyone types at once, the teacher spends less time calling on students one by one.
Source: Ditch That Textbook – Chapter 3: Use Technology to Defeat Insecurity
I personally believe that the backchannel is the greatest unharnessed resource that we as educators have available to us. It does not threaten me nor bother me that you learned as much if not more from the backchannel the other night — in fact, it makes me feel great that I facilitated the connection.
Source: Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Backchannels and Microblogging Streams
And that’s not even touching on the ways this kind of technology supports the shy user, the user with speech issues, the user having trouble with the English Language, the user who’d rather be able to think through and even edit a statement or question before asking it.
Whenever you “teach,” there is a “back channel.” It has always existed in every classroom, every lecture hall, every on-line learning environment.
It includes, “Hey, what did she say?” “This sucks.” “I don’t understand.” “That’s stupid, why doesn’t he answer the question?” “Do you know how to do this?” “When is that paper due?” even, “C’mon, come to the party with me tonight.”
In other words, students are talking, or passing notes, or rolling their eyes at each other as you talk, or asking for answers, or help, or complaining, or wondering, or wishing you’d get to stuff that somehow connected the topic to their interests.
I really began to appreciate the value and potential of this back channel a couple of summers ago taking an International Education course. Every time some claim was made Google searches exploded across the room, followed by emails: “That’s not true.” “Go this link.” “The UN says this…” And after that burst of activity someone would interrupt the class with a new data set or collection of opinions.
Powerful, powerful stuff.
Source: SpeEdChange: Bringing the “Back Channel” Forward
I couldn’t help wondering, since the study showed the durability of first impressions and the positive response to the written words of Autistics, with all visual and auditory cues removed, could we mitigate childhood bullying in any way by having a class of students meet first online, in text, and form their first impressions of one another in that format before ever meeting face-to-face?
Getting online was revolutionary and may have saved my life.
The difference between offline and online communication could not have been more dramatic.
Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: Autism and the Burden of Social Reciprocity
For the last few years, I’ve been spoiled. I’ve been surrounded by people who, when asked a question, immediately bring out a digital device and look it up. The conferences that I’ve attended have backchannels as a given. Tweeting, blogging, Wikipedia-ing… these are all just what we do.
I have become a “bad student.” I can no longer wander an art museum without asking a bazillion questions that the docent doesn’t know or won’t answer or desperately wanting access to information that goes beyond what’s on the brochure (like did you know that Rafael died from having too much sex!?!?!). I can’t pay attention in a lecture without looking up relevant content. And, in my world, every meeting and talk is enhanced through a backchannel of communication.
Source: danah boyd | I want my cyborg life
Online communication for autistics has been compared to sign language for the deaf. Online, we are able to participate as equals. Our disability is often invisible and we are treated like humans. It provides much needed human contact otherwise denied us.
One could make the argument that autistic people created the very computer environment autistic people are most comfortable in.
In fact, there is pretty good evidence that most of the science, technology, and arts you enjoy are the products of autistic minds.
Source: Welcome to the World Autism Made – An Intense World
The results were remarkable. The employees who had used the tool became 31% more likely to find coworkers with expertise relevant to meeting job goals. Those employees also became 88% more likely to accurately identify who could put them in contact with the right experts. They made these gains by observing what their coworkers talked about on Jive-n and with whom. The group that had no access to the tool showed no improvement on either measure over the same period.
These tools can promote employee collaboration and knowledge sharing across silos. They can help employees make faster decisions, develop more innovative ideas for products and services, and become more engaged in their work and their companies.
Source: What Managers Need to Know About Slack, Yammer, and Chatter
Inability to tap into the diversity of thinking and novel and new ideas that exists within those networks, severely limits our individual and organizational ability to move into the future in a much more progressive and relevant manner.
It is within these spaces, these networks, that connectivity is acquired and achieved, cognitive resources and idea flows are managed and exchanged, and where provocation for action upon these ideas is often mediated, accelerated and catalyzed.
What we are learning, especially as we look at the scaling up and proliferation of networks across society, and the level of data and knowledge they are providing, is that today’s organizations must learn to support a much more robust and dynamic set of internal and external networks, utilizing a variety of metrics that lead to a greater understanding how divergent idea flows, as well as organizational novelty and innovation awareness and dissemination can be cascaded across the organizational landscape in much more fluid, clear and coherent manner.
Today’s organizations must be able to unlock and engage both internal and external networks, in an effort to not only tap into a diversity of voices, but a diversity and divergence of thinking and ideas. These networks not only provide a platform for engaging an ongoing flow of the novel and new, they also create a cognitive space to play with ideas that often leads to not only the creation of new knowledge, but new actions and new ways of working.
Source: Networks: An Engine For Scaling Learning And Innovation (Part 3) | DCulberhouse
Sometimes it takes another person with your specific disability label, not another neurotypical teacher or peer, to help the world understand your experience. One of the first books I read about autism was Donna Williams’s memoir Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998). One of her observations has always struck me as particularly apt: “Communication via objects was safe,” Williams says. For me, computers are objects that can be a bridge to interpersonal connection and growth. Those are things we all want, regardless of our differences.
Source: Valuing differences: Neurodiversity in the classroom – kappanonline.org
I have developed a strong preference for written communication, which is a very effective strategy for avoiding the need for linguistic autistic masking.
Source: What CAN be misunderstood WILL be misunderstood | Autistic Collaboration
Computers as the essential prosthetic device for autistics?
InLv members regularly sing the praises of the new medium that allows them to have the form of communication they desire, while protecting them from the overwhelming sensory overload and rapid processing demands of human presence. For many, email lists are their first experience of community. Jane Meyerding, a member of InLv makes clear just how much autistics owe to computer technology:
Like a lot of ACs (autistics and cousins), I find myself able to enjoy “community” for the first time through the internet. The style of communication suits me just fine because it is one-on-one, entirely under my control in terms of when and how long I engage in it, and, unlike real-life encounters, allows me enough time to figure out and formulate my responses. In real-world encounters with groups—even very small groups—of people, I am freighted with disadvantages. I am distracted by my struggle to identify who is who (not being able to recognise faces), worn out by the effort to understand what is being said (because if there is more than one conversation going on in the room, or more than one voice speaking at a time, all the words become meaningless noise to me), and stressed by a great desire to escape from a confusing flood of sensation coming at me much too fast. (Jane Meyerding – Thoughts on Finding Myself Differently Brained, 1998)
Autistics compare the importance to them of computers with the importance of seeing-eye dogs to the blind. Martijn Dekker, who is the ‘owner’ of the InLv email forum, and a prominent autistic activist foreshadows puts it plainly:
For reasons obvious to our HFA/AS community, I consider a computer to be an essential disability provision for a person with Asperger’s. (8 Nov 1998)
Source: NeuroDiversity: The Birth of an Idea by Judy Singer
On the one hand modern industrialised empires, states, and corporations have unprecedented abilities to influence and manipulate large populations, and on the other hand, there is nothing that can stop autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people from connecting and collaborating across spatial and cultural boundaries.
Source: The evolution of evolution | Autistic Collaboration
Source: Uncomfortable Labels: My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman
Main Takeaways
- Written communication is the great social equalizer.
- The revenge of the nerds was taking shape as a society in which anyone who had access to a computer and a modem could feel less disabled by the limitations of space and time.
- The kids formerly ridiculed as nerds and brainiacs have grown up to become the architects of our future.
- Disability is an engine of innovation simply because no matter what their limitations, humans have such a relentless drive to communicate that they’ll invent new ways to do so, in spite of everything.
- Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside the primary group activity or live spoken remarks.
- This kind of technology supports the shy user, the user with speech issues, the user having trouble with the English Language, the user who’d rather be able to think through and even edit a statement or question before asking it.
- Online communication for autistics has been compared to sign language for the deaf. Online, we are able to participate as equals. Our disability is often invisible and we are treated like humans. It provides much needed human contact otherwise denied us.
- Online communication is a valid accommodation for the social disability that comes with being Autistic. We need online interaction.
- Thin slice studies showed that people prejudge us harshly in just micro-seconds of seeing or hearing us (though we fare better than neurotypical subjects when people only see our written words).
- The internet has allowed autistic people- who might be shut in their homes, unable to speak aloud, or unable to travel independently- to mingle with each other, share experiences, and talk about our lives to people who feel the same way. We were no longer alone.
- One could make the argument that autistic people created the very computer environment autistic people are most comfortable in.
- In fact, there is pretty good evidence that most of the science, technology, and arts you enjoy are the products of autistic minds.
- For many disabled people, social media gives them access to a social life and community involvement in an otherwise inaccessible world. Not only does social media give me the platform to correct assumptions, people don’t assume things about me in the first place, because it’s a level playing field.
- Phones are very stressful. ‘Call if you have a problem’ is an inaccessible gauntlet for many.
- Lots of autistic people can only sometimes use phones. It’s a major barrier to healthcare, to job success, to getting basic services and basic human rights.
- There is a clear message that mode of communication can be either enabling or disabling for autistic people. A reliance on phone calls can create barriers to access, yet the option to adopt written forms of communication can improve accessibility.
- Services should move away from a reliance on phone calls for communication. They should make sure that access to support is not dependent on the phone, and instead offer written options such as email and live messaging which are more accessible.
- Written communication may diminish some of the social interaction challenges autistic people experience in face-to-face contexts.
- Written Internet-mediated communication provides more control, thinking time, clarity and fewer sensory issues and streams of information that must be processed and interpreted.
- Autistic adults reported a preference for online or text-based appointment booking, facility to email in advance the reason for consultation, the first or last clinic appointment and a quiet place to wait.
- Writing is too important because, though forms and structures will differ, writing is the path to power for those born without power.
- Expression of one’s identity in a form that evokes empathy in those without similar experience, “communicating” “well” is a social leveler of supreme importance.
- Multiplicities are an intention: We build the best collaboration, the deepest learning, when we expand the opportunities for complex vision.
- The future is text: the universal interface.
- The Future Of Text lies in the re-definition of text “craftsmanship”, focused on enabling and facilitating a text-mediated access and interaction with the relationships, functions and actors of the reality we live in.
- Text augments all other media.
- The use of text to augment all other media (i.e. text description, alternate text, tags) is widely used and, in some cases, it is essential or a legal requirement. Indeed, the use of text is necessary for archiving, retrieving media, and for accessibility by both humans and machines.
- A workflow-focused approach to writing offers a pathway to agency, creativity, and confidence with computing.
- A lot of our ways of working are actually disability hacks: as it turns out a LOT of our people are very visual and a LOT of my people have poor working memory.
- Workflows can be an inclusive and productive concept-that we have much to gain by considering how we work, what tools we work with, and how those preferences can help us think beyond a set of default, invisible, or unstated norms.
- Disabled ways of languaging are primarily about modality.
- Crip linguistics frames language as a form of care work where we work collectively to provide access and co-construct meaning.
- If you are a dyslexic person or the parent of a dyslexic child, I recommend that you allow technology to become your new best friend.
- Use these terms to address an underlying bias in our schools: that eye reading is the only form of reading. You can help move the needle on this limited assumption by using the terms eye reading, ear reading, and finger reading yourself and explaining them to your child.
- We must question what we are taught is the “normal” way to do things, and instead integrate multiple ways for our children to access information.
- No one should make you feel bad about your language. We need a bigger and more flexible understanding of what language is and what it communicates about a bodymind’s capacity.
- I type to talk. Without typing I have no voice to tell you I am smart.
- Let’s augment everybody, let’s leave no mind behind.
- It is remarkable what happens when you stop telling people how to write and start encouraging them to write.
- No child should need a label or prescription in order to access the tools of learning or environments they need.
- Bring the backchannel forward.
- Backchannels accommodate neurological pluralism while fostering the serendipity of networks.
- Online communication for autistics has been compared to sign language for the deaf. Online, we are able to participate as equals. Our disability is often invisible and we are treated like humans. It provides much needed human contact otherwise denied us.
- One could make the argument that autistic people created the very computer environment autistic people are most comfortable in.
- Computers as the essential prosthetic device for autistics.
- Getting online was revolutionary and may have saved my life.
The Accommodations for Natural Human Variation Should Be Mutual
Enable Dignity
Real inclusive organizing should at a minimum include: Incorporating disability into your values or action statements; having disabled people on the organizing committee or board; making accessibility a priority from day one; and listening to feedback from disabled people.
Education Access
We have turned classrooms into hell for neurodivergence. Students with conflicting sensory needs and accommodations are squished together with no access to cave, campfire, or watering hole zones. This sensory environment feeds the overwhelm -> meltdown -> burnout cycle. Feedback loops cascade.
Healthcare Access
They don’t take disability studies classes.
They don’t socialize with us.
They don’t listen to us.
Wanted: hospitals and doctors’ offices that…
Interaction Access
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.
Communication Access
“Written communication is the great social equalizer.” It allows us to participate and be a part of things bigger than ourselves.
Technology Access
Our multi-age learning community sets up and runs our organization. We don’t use learning management software. Instead, our learners use the professional tools of a modern, neurodiverse organization, without all the ed-tech surveillance baked in. We use technology to co-create paths to equity and access with our learners.
