-
Dear Younger Me: What I Wish I’d Known About Being Autistic
One of the questions I always hear being asked is, "What words of advice would you tell your younger self?" Such a question seems very cliché to me. However, just because something is cliché doesn't mean it's boring. In fact, our thoughts on this evolve through our life experiences. This is...
-
When AI Functions as an Autism Support
When I was a child, I spent hours with action figures. I was especially obsessed with Dragon Ball Z. I did not simply reenact episodes. The characters developed relationships, conflicts, histories, and entire stories in my head. Scenes continued long after I put the toys away. For years,...
-
Stories of Autism in the Indian American Community: Rebuilding Life After Grief
Being an immigrant in the United States is a unique experience of navigating two worlds/cultures. I personally take great pride in being a second-generation Indian American. I’ve always loved the food, media, warmth, and hospitality. However, it hasn’t always been easy. My experience of being...
-
Autistic Lived Experience: Re-Thinking the Reasons for Past Behaviors
A late autism identification has a tendency to change one's perspective on things. My own identification at age 40 is certainly a case in point. Many questions for which there were never satisfactory explanations, answered. A half-baked self-identity made whole. In essence, a newly discovered lens...
-
Freeing the Mind: A Nonspeaking Autistic’s Case for Presuming Competence
Many nonspeakers are still locked in the prison of their own mind. Nonspeakers are underestimated because our bodies and brains are disconnected. Our minds work, but not with our body, so people conclude we are unintelligent. Apraxia is not well understood by parents, teachers, therapists, and the...
-
Studying Understanding Without Speech: Neuroimaging Minimally Speaking Autistic Individuals
Minimal speakers (MS) represent one-third of the autism spectrum, yet only 2% of autism research participants (Russell et al., 2019). Research conclusions based on people unlike minimal speakers in significant ways may be skewed, leading to profound misunderstanding. We aim to correct...
-
The Right to Learn: One Nonspeaking Autistic Student’s Case for Educational Access and Dignity
Beginning as a small child, school is where you make friends and learn to process the world around you. Most of modern society is formed on the basis that people have received a formal education. Whether that education be from primary to high school, or onward to a college education, it is presumed...
-
We Shall Overcome: Why I Am Certain Nonspeakers Will Win Our Rights to Communicate
I was born perfectly healthy and passed all my developmental milestones, including saying words like "ball" and "dog." Then suddenly, at 15 months, I lost all my spoken words and started to bang my head on the floor. My parents brought me to Yale Medical School, and their only recommendation was to...
-
The Power of Presuming Competence: A Nonspeaker’s Call to Action
I stop and think about what I went through as a young child all the time. On a scale of 0 to 10, so many of the therapies that overtook my life would get a negative number! It wasn't that the therapists were bad people; it was because the initial premise of the treatments was fatally flawed. How? I...
-
My Journey to Independent Typing: One Autistic Nonspeaker’s Story
Each autistic nonspeaker I know is trying to become independent with their communication. Of course. Why wouldn't we? If you have something to say, you want to be able to do it without help. Typing seems to be the holy grail for most. Why? Because the sad but true fact is that the...
