-
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,...
-
Why Spider-Man: Brand New Day Is Resonating with Neurodivergent Audiences
(Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Spider-Man: Brand New Day.") Something was fitting about seeing Spider-Man: Brand New Day at a packed 7:30 a.m. screening in Brooklyn (yes, I said a.m.). As the lights went down, I wasn't just watching Peter Parker – I was watching New York. And,...
-
A 30-Year Journey From Skepticism to Acceptance: Reconsidering the Authenticity of Assisted Communication of Nonspeakers
My introduction to assisted communication (AC) for nonspeaking and minimally speaking individuals was in reference to facilitated communication (FC). During July of 1991 at the Autism Society of America's annual conference, I was asked to participate on a panel that was hastily organized to have an...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Very Great Sound: The Case for Teaching Poetry to Nonspeaking Autistic Students
Last April, I found myself in a Stockholm studio, sitting next to my college buddy Spencer Reece, with whom I'd taken my first creative writing course forty-three years ago—our teacher was the Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard. We had traveled to Sweden to teach our own creative writing...
-
Giving Voice to Non-Speakers: Language, Respect, and the Power of Naming
For the longest time, I used the term non-speaking synonymously with non-verbal, having been taught ‘non-verbal’ in graduate school. Since that time, new terms and definitions have emerged with the advent of a variety of disability rights movements. Person-First Language Person-first...
-
Re-Envisioning Our Unnecessarily Disabled Futures
Most disabled adults are forced to live segregated, impoverished lives absent of the security, life expectancy, community, and agency that all human beings deserve. For those of us from historically marginalized communities, including non-speakers, the isolation can be even more profound. The life...
-
Presuming Competence: What It Really Means and Why It Is Life Changing
Presuming competence is such a core foundational principle for people working with non-speakers to understand. It is the very first thing we talk about in our training programs and a topic we revisit in every coaching session. Parents, staff, therapists, teachers, and anyone else interacting with...
-
The Miracle Project’s “Express Yourself” Program Gives Nonspeaking/Multi-Modal Artists the Stage
The Miracle Project (TMP), founded in 2004, is internationally recognized as the first systematic, evidence-based program to use expressive and performing arts to improve quality of life and relationships for autistic individuals while challenging negative societal stereotypes through authentic...
