Penguin sonnet

I took a workshop on Shakespearan improv and they had us write a sonnet with a prompt of penguins. 

Is it a perfect sonnet? LOL no. 

Have it anyways:

They say the penguin cannot fly, and yet —

You join me in the pilot’s cabin now.

Stood before the console to lose their bet

Underspecified, never asking how

If not over-under your own power, 

Topsy-turvy diodes pedals controls,

Wings you’re not born with turned to the tower,

List’ning for radio on angled bowls.

Preflight checks completed, penguins seated

Engines waking only to dream again

Of impossibility once defeated

Never seems so firm a never again

Hark! A penguin! Taken up to the sky.

Wings for water move wings for air, now fly. 

What AAC system do you use?

People often ask me what AAC system I use. For some reason, they almost never* ask me what AAC systems I use (the difference is the plural.) 

This is true in a bunch of different situations where people might ask what system I use. In situations where I can give an open-ended answer, I can explain my actual use: lots of different systems and tools. In situations where I have to give a closed-form answer (mostly to do with surveys and other research), the assumption of a single system or a single device is a bigger problem, because it means I (and quite a few other people) can't accurately give the information people are trying to ask for.

However, the assumption of a single system or a single device for AAC is still a problem when I can answer with the actual list of several things I use. It's still a problem because the expectation of one system makes options like guided access seem sensible: if a person only uses one app to communicate, then locking them into that one app could keep the device locked to meeting their communication needs. But if a person uses many communication options, including multiple programs on the same device (not all of which were necessarily designed for AAC or are necessarily considered AAC software), then locking a device to only one of those programs doesn't sound nearly as helpful! What if I need one of the ones you didn't pick? Or what if I need more than one AAC tool simultaneously? My current record for simultaneous use is four devices at once: three with Flip Writer, one sitting with each of the three people I was at dinner with, plus my MacBook that I was typing a longer response on.

It's also a problem because the expectation of one system leads people to reject options that can do a great job meeting some of their needs some of the time because they have some needs or situations where it won't work at all. Having one program that does a so-so job at all the things I want to do is not necessarily better than having six programs that are all very good at one or two of the things and switching between them depending on which thing I need to do.  On a similar note, it means people might stop looking after they've found one thing that mostly works. Maybe we found a symbol-based system that works, or we found a text-based system that works, but it would actually be best to have both for different situations!

Thinking in terms of use cases for AAC options instead of whether they somehow meet all my needs (none do) also means that situational use is much more common for me than true device or program abandonment. It also lets us draw a distinction between options that we haven't used in a long time because their use case hasn't come up in a long time (like the whiteboard I regularly used during my masters program) and options that aren't ideal for any of our use cases (the free version of Verbally just did not work for me). An option I would dust off as soon as its rare or narrow use case comes up isn't actually abandoned -- even if it might look that way for months or years. An option that doesn't work for any of my use cases is abandoned -- even if I only finished testing it to figure that out an hour ago.

As an example, instead of just theory, here are some tools I currently use to communicate and their use cases:

• Mouth words**: I am a part-time AAC user. I speak for most presentations or performances. I also use it for most one-on-one conversations. Because speech is expensive for me, it may not still be available after a presentation or performance, and it may not be particularly effective even if it is still technically possible.
  
  
• Flip Writer: In most face to face settings, I want to show people what I typed without speech generation. Flip Writer flips what I type and makes it bigger while I'm writing, in any language I have a system keyboard for. It has speech generation, but the speech generation usually only works in English. I have not figured out the pattern for the occasional times that Flip Writer has done speech generation in Mandarin for me.
  
  
• Proloquo4Text: When I am giving a presentation with AAC, saved phrases are important and I probably want speech generation. Presentations where I will be standing and moving around the room are my main use case for Proloquo4Text on my iPad. I use Proloquo4Text on my Mac when I want speech generation in a video call, for seated presentations, or when doing certain kinds of scenes from Augmentative and Alternative Improvisation. 
  
  
• Proloquo: I use this for Augmentative and Alternative Improvisation. I don't use it for my personal communication needs off-stage.
  
  
• Chat functions: Chat functions in video calls aren't designed for AAC per se, but if I'm in an environment where people actually pay attention to the chat, I tend to prefer this to using speech generation on video calls. The more people there are in a video call, the more likely I am to need to use the chat as opposed to being able to coordinate listening and turn-taking and deciding what to say and speech all at once.
  
  
• Projectors: Sometimes, I am in an environment where people's statements are being captioned for access reasons. (More environments should do this!) Many real-time captioners, especially the automated ones, struggle with AAC voices. Other times, I am in an environment with people who may not be used to AAC voices -- like my neuroscience classmates in graduate school. Projecting my actual screen means that my exact words are available visually. I also tend to prefer not to use speech generation with my AAC, both for gender reasons and for turn-taking reasons: I have the unusual preference of not treating my typing/composing as part of me talking, both in terms of whether you're interrupting me and in terms of whether I'm interrupting you. (It's only fair if it goes both ways!)
  
  
• Word processing software: If I don't need speech generation, then a projector is getting used with a word processor document, not Proloquo4Text, and then I'm making the font large. I'll also use word processing software on my computer to type longer responses where the speed increase from working with a physical keyboard matters, or if I need more AAC devices at once than I have iDevices with me.
  
  
• White board and marker: If I'm in a room that has a white board, doing an activity where being close to the white board is reasonable, writing on that board with a marker is likely to be my preference! This use case doesn't come up nearly as often now as it did when I was working on my masters in math, but it's still a true preference when it comes up.
  
  
• Pen and paper: This is distinct from white board and marker for three main reasons. First, the white board gives a stronger "I am composing a message!" signal than pen and paper does in many circumstances. Second, pen and paper is more portable than a white board -- if I'm planning on pen and paper, I'm likely to have a pocket full of index cards. Finally, my white board handwriting is significantly different from (more legible and less painful than) my pen and paper handwriting. I mostly use pen and paper in environments where electronics should ideally not be used (chemistry labs, animal research labs), where space is a serious issue, where leaving my message with the person is valuable (other teaching environments), if it's too bright for someone to realistically read my screen, or if my electronics have dead/nearly dead batteries.
  
  
• eSpeak: If I need speech generation in Mandarin Chinese, this is my go-to. I am 100% annoyed about its inability to detect which pronunciation should be used for characters which are pronounced differently based on context. However, this problem is not unique to eSpeak or Mandarin: English-language AAC software tends to have the same problem with words like "read" and "live."
  
  
•  EDIT: Added to post on June 23, 2025; added to rotation of AAC systems in April 2025. Weave Chat AAC: If I need speech generation in Mandarin Chinese and don't want to carry my whole Windows laptop for it, Weave Chat AAC on my iPad or iPhone has joined the list of options. It also gets the 旅行/银行 pronunciation change for 行 correct and can technically be made to read Chinese text in the Chinese voice and English text in the English voice without a single utterance -- despite not actually claiming to support Chinese. 
  
  
• Texting/email/messenger systems: Tools designed for asynchronous text-based communication are still designed for text-based communication! I can use them to communicate regardless of the current status of my mouth word. 

 

This is a list, in no particular order, of eleven twelve communication options. Admittedly, only three four of them are actually designed for AAC, and one of them is really only used in combination with others. Still, this is very much not a combination where I could give a singular answer of what AAC system I use.

 

 

* I did say almost, and I think the exceptions are important. So here are the ones I know of:

• The survey this poster is based on did ask about the use of multiple tools for AAC. It's not really addressed in the poster itself, which focused on whether the communication participation item bank (CPIB) reflects experiences of intermittent, unreliable, insufficient, and expensive speech, but the survey did cover it.
  
• When CommunicationFIRST is involved in a survey that asks how we communicate, it's been a check-multiple question that includes a fill-in 'other' category. Spoken language makes the list, too! 
• The Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Peer Support Project has a poster about this type of result; most AAC users reported using 5-10 methods. I believe the 11 things I list in this post would condense into 5 items on that survey.
  
• Bridging the Social & Technical Divide in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Applications for Autistic Adults supported listing multiple options. Every participant listed multiple options for their current AAC, most including multiple options that were designed for AAC. I did give feedback on the questions. I don't remember if letting people pick multiple options to describe their current AAC was one of my suggestions.
  
• This study, sponsored by Tobii Dynavox about the impacts of AAC in Sweden, logically must have supported multiple selection on both AAC hardware and software for the numbers in the report to work -- both hardware and software numbers add up to well over 100%. 
  

** Based on the results of our terminology survey, "mouth words" is a term to think before using. As a part-time AAC user describing my own use of spoken language: I have thought and yes I do want to use the term that makes the option of spoken language sound a bit more marked or weird.

Purimgifts 2024 Dear Creator

Dear Creator,

First off, thank you!

For Tamora Pierce, I've been interested in Eleni Cooper's backstory for a long time. I also love future!fic where Kel and Alanna get to Actually Have a relationship or where either or both of them get to interact with future girl pages & squires. Emelan is also great but I have fewer Specific Ideas. 

For the Divergent series -- I love Tris. I love Tori. I love the Dauntless girls in general. I have an extremely antagonistic relationship with the canonical framing of what Divergence is as of book 3. Like, published an academic paper about it level of antagonism: Pulling the Rug Out From Under (Neuro)Divergence in the Divergent Universe. So definitely feel free to chuck as much of book 3 into the woodchipper as you want.

I tend to read Alanna (Tortall), Kel (Tortall), Tris (both Emelan and Divergent), and Dairine (Young Wizards) as autistic. You're welcome to use or ignore that as you wish :)

I enjoy the other fandoms but don't have a ton to say about specifics for them. Crossovers between any number of my requested fandoms are Absolutely Fine, if a crossover idea strikes your fancy. If the fandom (including recursive fandoms) is in my bookmarks or is something I've written for/had crossover elements with you can safely assume that crossover/fusion including that fandom is OK as well. 

(Harry Potter is another one where I have an Antagonistic Relationship with canon. Revolutionary Arc (kitsunerei88) versions of Kel and/or Alanna are Explicitly Definitely Fine. I didn't request Harry Potter in general because I don't want pure Potter fic, but both Rigel Black Chronicles and Revolutionary Arc recursive fics are welcome (and specific fusions with Tortall lol)! I have a soft spot for Jewish Kowalski's fics.)

Cheers,

Alyssa

One Last Autistics Speaking Day

I actually don't remember the start of Autistics Speaking Day (I'd just started my freshman year of college), but I've read about it. 

I've participated a few times.

I helped with the Tumblr for it, I think 2014-2016? 

But as time moves on, the ways people engage in communities have changed. Yahoo groups were before my time. I began engaging in the age of blogs. I saw #AutChat start. I think we're in the age of social media, now, more so than stand-alone blogs.

I'm not sure that's a good thing, but I think it's true. Facebook groups are where I'm most active, now. 

I'm still speaking. Just... not usually orally, and not usually here. 

(It's also relevant that I've been writing in places that aren't blogs or social media, but that's more the academic side of things than the everyday.)

The Intersectional Infinity Summit

Today, I presented at the Intersectional Infinity Summit. Twice, actually. 

First, I talked about "Exploring AAC as a Student & Educator--Communication Access & Accommodation." Then, I was on the panel, Why Autistic Acceptance is Essential. Spoken language was working for me at the first presentation, but not at the panel, which I think is kind of funny because it meant I used AAC for the presentation that wasn't about AAC. 

Because I used AAC for the panel, I have a record of everything I said during it. That's below, but slightly out of context: 

My name is Alyssa. My pronouns are they, them, theirs. I am a white human with dark brown hair in front of a blurred background.

 I am at yes underscore that too on Twitter. I can speak some of the time but not all of the time. I use augmentative and alternative communication when speech does not meet my needs.

I am definitely autistic and aphantasiac. I may be neurodivergent in other ways too.

If a question is addressed specifically to me, please wait. If it is addressed to multiple panelists, someone else can go first while I type.

I sometimes call April “autistic hell month.”

I do my best to ignore April. Last year my dissertation defense in April kept me busy. I could not pay too much attention to Autistic hell month because I was too busy trying to become Dr. Zisk.

This year I have a survey active during April so I do not get to ignore it. We started sharing it before April because I knew many autistic people would be too tired to participate once April got underway.

(BTW, the survey: Words matter. What words do you prefer when talking about AAC and the people that use it? Fill in this survey and tell us your preferences. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3NMXCHG
You can also help by sharing the link to the survey.)

 

If you are thinking about doing an awareness event but do not know where to find autistic experts to help you do it right or do not have the budget to hire one, remember that there is the option of Not Doing An Event.

 

I prefer resources that treat neurodivergent characters as human characters who do things for human reasons. Learning to understand the actions of different others and their reasons through stories is possible, if the stories give reasons beyond 'because they are broken in this named way.'

If you read a story about a person who acts for reasons, it’s easier to understand that story if you 1) might have similar reasons for action, and 2) would get similar effects from  similar actions. Both conditions can be violated in cross-cultural communication and in cross-neurotype communication, but you can still try.

 

No amount of evidence that an intervention can achieve a goal I do not have will magically turn into evidence that it can achieve the goals I do have.

 

I think about connections between cross-neurotype stuff and cross-cultural stuff: we can learn how to do cross-neurotype communication better from the parts of cross-cultural communication that are done well. And we can see that the problems are not unique to neurodivergent people.

I noticed overlap between my experiences studying abroad and my experiences as an autistic person. However, I got more leeway for my differences when studying abroad than when people assumed it was all about autism. This is common for white neurodivergent people.

We know we're different. You get a say in how we understand that difference, but trying to pretend we're the same won't go well.

Casual Representation Matters

For a long time, I didn't think representation in fiction affected me the same way it affects most people. I intellectually understood that it mattered, and why, but I didn't fully get it. I'd read books with protagonists who were boys and protagonists who were girls (and protagonist teams that had both), and it didn't make much of a difference to me. I admittedly had (and still have) a soft spot for stories where a girl passed herself off as a boy, like Alanna, then of Trebond, from Tamora Pierce's Tortall universe, but there wasn't any great reaction to protagonists who were "like me".

Probably part of this was that most autistic characters written by non-autistic authors are really stereotypical. Definitely part of this was that I'd never actually read a story with a protagonist of my gender. Ever.

By which I mean, I'm non-binary. Reading a story about girls isn't actually representing me, no matter how many people mistake me for a girl.

Then I read Ninefox Gambit, The Raven Strategem, and Revenant Gun.

On top of the plots, which, yes good, these books have casual trans representation. There is an important minor character who uses they/them pronouns, and it's not considered noteworthy that they do. There are plenty of things that are noteworthy about this absolutely terrifying human, but in-universe, their pronouns are just a casual thing.

I actually started crying when I first saw Zehun referred to as a they.

There's also a trans guy in the story whose transness is, again, not a big deal in-world. We know about it because we see him binding (or undoing his binder before bed? I don't totally remember.) That's literally the only reference, but it tells us that yes, there are trans people in this universe. Many (perhaps most?) get surgery, but there are still trans people who bind.

He's a man and I'm not, but again, I cried. Here's a character binding and also being very important to the story for reasons that have nothing to do with his being trans.

When we talk about casual representation, with trans characters in stories that aren't about being trans, this is what we mean. (And yes, I'm aware of some irony in this post being about how they are trans. Representation matters, so I'm going to tell y'all the characters are, in fact, trans. Zehun is like me. I needed that.) There's enough information for me to know these characters are trans. But the story isn't about gender. It's about oppressive interstellar empires and living within (or upending) them. With trans people in it. Their world isn't one I especially want to live in, but it's one that recognizes people like me exist. That means something.

Don't change other people's pronouns!

Pro tip for editors: Don't change the pronouns in contributor bios. Your contributors almost certainly did not accidentally type the "wrong" pronoun for themselves several times and not notice.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) November 25, 2017

I've been sitting on this for a while, waiting until the point where I'm ready to write about this. The tip  applies to more than just editors, and it's more than just editors who've changed my pronouns on me. I don't mean that I've told them my pronouns, and then they've written something about me using incorrect pronouns. That's a problem, and as another tip, don't do that either. I mean I've been asked to write an introduction or bio for myself, I've done so, I've sent the text in, and then the final posted text has been edited specifically to change my pronouns.

Maybe they think I accidentally typed the "wrong" pronouns for myself, with the "wrong" conjugation, throughout? I assure you, I am intentional enough about my word choices to avoid making this error consistently for the whole paragraph. I make typos, and sometimes words will be entirely missing, but I don't accidentally misgender myself in text. Discomfort with doing so is how I figured out that 1) I am nonbinary, and 2) my pronouns are they/them/theirs. (Sie/sier/siers is also acceptable in text, but sounds too much like "she" for my comfort when spoken.)

Maybe they think my pronouns are grammatically incorrect? Whenever someone tells me an introduction or bio I wrote for myself, or really, anything I wrote about myself in the third person, has grammatical issues, my first question is if they mean my pronouns. Never mind that singular "they" is older than they are, it's a common statement. I've heard it from people who don't know my pronouns ... and people who do. (Once, a professor pointed out a grammatical issue that had nothing to do with my pronouns or their conjugation. I fixed it, and I thanked him. He didn't say a word about my pronouns.)

Maybe they don't personally have an issue, but think my pronouns will confuse readers. I've been asked before if the plural might confuse a reader. Here's the thing: you can add a note about my pronouns! I've had people do this. It's OK. You can write Alyssa (they/them/theirs) in a text when you talk about me so readers explicitly know "they" is being used as a singular pronoun to refer to me. You can say "Alyssa uses they/them pronouns" in a footnote after my name. You can do both! I'd love it if this weren't needed. However, it's common for people to read text that just uses my pronouns without a note and then use the wrong pronouns to describe me. This note may both reduce any real confusion (as opposed to transphobia masquerading as confusion) and serve as a reminder for people who don't just don't really notice singular they pronouns in text.

Because here's the thing: When you edit text to change my pronouns, it is misgendering. The excuses people make don't hold up. Singular "they" is grammatically fine. Singular "you" is actually newer than singular "they." (Singular "you" and singular "they" get the same verb/adjective treatments because they have similar histories in terms of starting off plural and becoming singular at a later date. It's just that both these dates are long past.) Expressive difficulties are real, but they don't apply here because you didn't need to edit my already existing text.  Direct explanations are the way to avoid confusion without lying. Changing other people's pronouns is misgendering. Don't do it. This is a case where the no-effort option of not making changes is the correct option.

(If, after reading this, you're wondering if I'm talking about you: only if you've actually done this, and there's enough of you that I neither want nor need to single anyone out. I just want people to be aware of this as a thing to not do.)

I still exist!

 It's been a bit over 2 years since I've posted here. I doubt that I'm going to become super active here, but I do still exist. I'm fairly active on Twitter, though outside of hashtag chats like #AutChat and #ATChat I retweet more than I make new tweets. Some highlights from the past two years include:

• A pandemic, which is still ongoing.
  
  
• The chemistry labs I were teaching in Spring 2020 went online on very little notice, with an extended spring break followed by 'how to finish a lab online while most of the students can't get at the lab notebooks they left on campus.' It was an entire mess.
  
  
• My dissertation research went remote. Again. [Before, I specifically was remote because the office was full of sensory triggers. This time, everyone was remote.]
  
  
• I got covid. Mild case, no new cognitive weirdness, still not a fan.
  
  
• I finished my Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience. My dissertation was very much towards the engineering side of things, on one specific kind of brain computer interface as used by people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. My dissertation is also done, though I still need to turn the last chapter into a journal article or a conference paper or something of that sort.
  
  
• I did a round on the academic job market. I'll be teaching one undergraduate neuroscience class at the University of Rhode Island this upcoming spring, but I didn't get a full time academic position. I've been applying again this round for jobs that start in academic year 2022-2023.
  
  
• I am currently doing a mix of teaching for the Art of Problem Solving, work for AssistiveWare, and other research, much of which is related to augmentative and alternative communication.
  
  

 

November 20, 2019 #ATChat: User Perspectives

I'll be moderating #ATChat, a Twitter Chat on Assistive Technology, on November 20. The chat is 8-9pm EST, and the topic is going to be user perspectives. If seeing the questions ahead of time is helpful for you, they are below. Please wait to tweet your responses until the relevant question is asked, though!

Some people here (like me!) may play multiple roles: AT user, professional, or researcher. If this describes you, feel free to answer from all your roles! #



Q1: Why would you want to include user perspectives? Why is this important?
#ATChat

Q2: What do you use user perspectives for currently? If you use AT yourself, what have you shared your perspectives for?
#ATChat

Q3: What might you want to use user perspectives for, that you currently don’t? If you use AT yourself, where would you like your perspective included better? #ATChat

Q4: How do you include the perspectives, goals, and desires of the users you work with? Or, how are your perspectives as an AT user included? #ATChat

Q5: Where do you look for additional user perspectives, or where do you share your perspective as an AT user?   #ATChat

Q6: What do you think about engagement with social media content by AT users, like blogs, twitter feeds, or transcripts from relevant Twitter chats?  #ATChat
Engagement could include reading and interacting with users and user communities on topics of interest, sharing our content, and other things you might think of. #ATChat

Q7: What work by AT users would you recommend to other participants? (Self-promotion is OK here, for those of us who use AT!)  #ATChat

Literally Speaking About Not-Always-Speaking on Autistics Speaking Day

This Autistics Speaking Day, I presented at the American EducationalStudies Association conference on my paper, “Am I the Curriculum?”

Given the origin of Autistics Speaking Day as a response to a Communication Shutdown event, telling neurotypicals to get off social media for the day to simulate and empathise with autistic communication difficulties, I think giving this literal speech on Autistics Speaking Day was fitting.

Autistic people often use tools like social media to support our communication. I believe that our doing so should be considered as the communication support it is, just as augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) researchers do for people they recognize as needing AAC. (I also think speaking autistic people should be recognized as needing AAC. Heck, AAC for everyone. Let's not depend on speech language pathologists specifically, or outsiders in general, to recognize communication difficulties that AAC could help with.)

I use social media to support my communication. That's literally what I'm doing with my blog. That's literally what Autistics Speaking Day is. The Internet is, so often, our lifeline. I am no exception to my statement that speaking autistic people can benefit from AAC, or that social media is part of this.

So speaking about my experience as an AAC user, as someone who often has to use tools other than speech (like social media, but not only social media) to communicate, on Autistics Speaking Day, seems fitting. Advocating for AAC for everyone, which I've said before and will say again, on Autistics Speaking Day, seems fitting.

And speaking back to the awkwardness of entering professional spaces as an autistic AAC user, to advocate for these changes, to advocate for increased access to AAC for us? Yes, that's part of Autistics Speaking Day too.

Pronoun Information as a Design Problem

Trans people exist. People we are working with in a variety of contexts won't always guess our genders or pronouns correctly. Sometimes, guessing leads to misgendering people, which isn't good. Several ways of dealing with this have been proposed and sometimes used. None of them are perfect. When people are working in good faith, we can think of this as a design problem: solutions aren't static, we can improve them, and we can come up with new options. (When people are intentionally being anti-trans, handling that is a different question.)

Current solutions include:

• Adding pronouns to typical introduction circles
• Pronoun pins/pronouns on name tags
• Defaulting to gender-neutral pronouns unless and until you have specific information about the person you're talking about.

These solutions all have advantages and disadvantages. Considering them one at a time might help us think about better ways of doing this. (And no, we don't abandon the current solutions while we're trying to think of better ones. That just leaves us with no solutions. I'm keeping my they/them pins and noting my pronouns in introduction circles whether or not they were listed as part of what we "should" be saying about ourselves, thank you very much.)


So, first: Adding pronouns to typical introduction circles. The advantages include:

• Introduction circles already exist.
• In theory, we can get everyone's pronouns this way, thereby avoiding misgendering people by guessing incorrectly. 

The disadvantages include:

• Introduction circles were already a clunky, awkward, unnatural front-loading cram of personal information. Adding pronouns to them does not fix any of ways introduction circles were already awkward, and most people will still forget most of what they "learned" from this cram session.
• If pronouns are a required part of the introduction, people who aren't out may need to choose between lying and coming out. That's not cool.
• Only including pronouns in these introduction circles when you think there's a trans person in the room draws attention to whoever it is you think is trans (not cool), as well as to the gender of everyone in the room.
• Only including pronouns in these introduction circles when you think there's a trans person in the room can lead to not including pronouns when there's an out trans person who would be misgendered without a chance to state their pronouns.

Making pronouns an optional part of all introduction circles might help address some of these disadvantages. It won't do anything about the fact that these introduction circles were awkward to begin with.


Second: Pronoun pins/pronouns on name tags. The advantages include:

• Name tags are already in common use at certain kinds of events.
• If the person is present, so is a visible reminder of their pronouns.

The disadvantages include:

• If there's no name tag, the pronoun pin could be just about anywhere. Where do we look for it?
• If pronoun pins/pronouns on nametags are required, people who aren't out may need to choose between lying and coming out. 
• If this is done in a computer system without a fill in the blank option, people may be forced to lie because their actual pronouns aren't on the list of options.
• When the person isn't present and you need to talk about them, there's no visible reminder. 
• Blind people may not be able to use this system effectively, so there is an access issue.

Making pronouns an optional part of name tags when name tags are in use can address some of these issues. So can letting people put whatever pronouns they want on their name tags, not limited by a list organizers came up with.

Third: Defaulting to gender-neutral pronouns unless and until you have specific information about the person you're talking about. The advantages include:

• Not gendering people who prefer not to be gendered.

The disadvantages include:

• Not all languages have gender-neutral pronouns.
• Languages that have gender-neutral pronouns may not have a single set of gender-neutral pronouns.
• Gender-neutral pronouns are also used to de-gender binary trans people, and that's not OK. 

I don't really have any suggestions for tweaking this option.


One idea I have, which I haven't seen discussed as a way of introducing pronouns before (though it could have been -- I obviously don't see everything), is the third person bio. It's a context-dependent option, in that it won't always make sense to include third person bios for people, but some conferences already have presenter bios. So do some meetings. By writing these introductions in third person, we aren't announcing "my pronouns are X," but we are choosing pronouns (or choosing to avoid pronouns.)

As an example, many presenters for AAC in the Cloud wrote introductions in third person. (A few used "I." I used "they.") People generally weren't leading into their presentations with their pronouns. I might have (I don't remember), but it wasn't generally a thing. We could get good information about how to talk about people, though: Dr. Kathy Howery starts with her title, indicating we should use it, and uses she/her pronouns in her introduction. I just use my first name (Alyssa), indicating I don't need an honorific (if you want to use one, it's Mx. until I finish my PhD, but I don't need one) and they/them pronouns in mine. Ms. Helland tells me that "Ms. Lastname" is the right format to use for her, and she uses she/her pronouns. And no, I wasn't the only presenter to use they/them pronouns in my bio.

The advantages of this option include:

• The information about our pronoun preferences is there -- avoiding pronouns is also a choice.
• This can hold additional information about us, including additional information about how to refer to us!
• Bios can be referred back to in a way introduction circles can't be.
• It's a comparatively implicit cue, which may feel more natural for people.

The disadvantages of this option include:

• Ok, where are we putting all these third person bios anyways? (For conferences and meetings that have programs, the program makes sense, but that's not everywhere. The site where I teach math has them posted to the online classroom on the first day of class, and also on the teachers page.)
• There can still be a choice between coming out, lying, and avoiding pronouns for trans people who aren't out. I don't think any of those are ideal.
• Do people actually read these, even when they're present? I'm not certain.

Are any of these perfect solutions? Obviously not. They're imperfect and context-dependent. Besides, I'm an engineer. I don't actually believe in perfect solutions -- just better ones, and continued improvement. So, you know, keep thinking?

Dimensionality Reduction

Dimensionality reduction is something I deal with in math, statistics, and engineering. It comes up in my research. The idea is that when data is complicated, because there are a lot of different kinds of information in it, we can make our lives easier by considering fewer variables. Sometimes we pick from the variables that are already there. Sometimes we smush several variables together and create new ones out of the results, then pick from those. Either way, it can be useful to reduce the number of variables, the number of dimensions, that we need to deal with in a complicated pile of data.

However, we lose information when we do so. Like everything else engineers need to do, there are trade-offs involved, and we need to recognize that. Dimensionality reduction means simplification, which can make large amounts of information easier to deal with. But over-simplification makes information less useful.

Using disability and access needs as an example:

I use a much more complicated thought process to decide what I can and can't do on any given day than people who know me might use to guess what I might and might not be able to do. This includes deciding when I'm just done for the day.

My major professor works with me in an environment (our lab) where my losing speech is most likely due to sensory triggers. If I lose speech due to sensory triggers, I'm leaving the environment where it happened. She knows that if I can't talk I'm probably going home. This is an appropriate simplification for the context.

However, when I was a graduate student in math, I most frequently lost speech in classes where I was a student because I'd already taught that day and I'd essentially run out of mouth-words. Nothing bad was happening, and nothing bad was going to happen because I stuck around and kept doing math without speech. My classmates and professors knew that if I couldn't talk, I was probably going to grab a whiteboard marker and start writing on the board instead. This was an appropriate simplification for the context.

Those are both examples of appropriate dimensionality reduction. In the lab, "can speak" vs. "arrived non-speaking" vs. "lost speech in the lab" was a 3-possibility variable that made a decent proxy for how I was feeling and how well I could work. In the math classroom, whether or not I can speak wasn't an important variable. 

Ignoring the variable of whether or not I can speak in the lab would mean ignoring useful information. Using the variable of whether or not I can speak in the math classroom might mislead people into finding patterns that aren't really there. So it's important to choose the right variables to focus on!



And yes, this applies to functioning levels. In addition to being ableist and grading against a neurotypical standard (which is its own, major issue), functioning levels attempt to reduce all the complex information about a persons abilities and needs over time and across a variety of contexts down to one dimension. That's always going to be inappropriate dimensionality reduction, simplifying what we know to the point that it's useless. Talking about low, medium, or high support needs isn't going to fix this problem. Neither will talking about low vs. high masking as if either of those means a single thing. Those still use a single dimension, and you can't shove enough information about what those support needs actually are, or what the specific effects of masking are into a single dimension for it to ever work.

Disability Microfiction

For Cassandra Khaw's birthday, she asked that people do microfiction requests. So, I said I'd do disability microfiction (basically a story, premise, or piece of a story that fits in a single tweet) for people who replied with a word.

Reply with a word for a disability microfic https://t.co/ConggtPn39

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

This is me saving the fiction I wrote, and putting it in one place for blog followers who don't necessarily use Twitter.

Prompt: Cape

Her cape could double as a magic carpet. It came in handy when people forgot they were supposed to have ramps...

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Echo

“Echo echo echo!” I called out to the canyon. My voice didn’t come back, but I was having fun repeating the word anyways.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Exuberant

When she heard the news, Anna couldn’t stop happy-flapping. Not that she wanted to. Being elected President definitely warranted happy-flapping.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Horses

We made prostheses for the horses who lost legs in accidents.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Triskaidekaphobia

I looked at the AAC specialist.
"... did you really need to unmask *exactly 13* words on that page? Can't we add, like, one more out of ALL THE WORDS?"#AAC #slpeeps #slp

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Ecstatic

They shook their wife awake. "Text the midwife, it's time!" they signed.

Their wife placed a hand on their belly, ecstatic, and reached for her cell phone.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Kiss

At the end of the date, she rolled her wheelchair around the table, next to his. "May I kiss you?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

And they did.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Dorsiflexion

The patron goddess of travel taught you to ride side-saddle, to avoid dorsiflexion.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Strong Independent Person

The princess couldn’t speak, so she studied magic and designed a slate that spoke what she wrote on it.

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

Prompt: Crackle

His joints crackled as he put his knee back together. "What, haven't you ever seen a cyborg?" he joked. (He wasn't actually a cyborg, yet. Just hypermobile.)

— Alyssa (@yes_thattoo) August 31, 2019

That AAC on a plane story

I want to talk about a thread that's going viral.

I just had such an affirming experience. On my 8hr intl flight back from a conference, I sat next to a father/son. In broken English, the father began to apologize/warn me that his ~10 yr-old son had severe nonverbal autism, and that this would like be a difficult journey. 1/

— Rachel R. Romeo (@RachelRRomeo) August 28, 2019

My problems are not with Rachel, but I do have problems.

Problem the first:

I tried to see if he was stimulable for a communication board. I started by pulling up some standard images for basic nouns on my computer but I could tell that screens really bothered him. So I summoned my god-awful drawing skills and tried to create a (very!) low-tech board. 4/

— Rachel R. Romeo (@RachelRRomeo) August 28, 2019

Rachel doesn't think this kid's been exposed to much in the way of communication therapy. I don't know about therapy with a focus on speech, but given the father's confusion and how fast the kid responded to a low-tech communication board, I'm quite sure he hadn't been exposed to AAC before.

That's a problem. Yes, thank you for introducing communication supports. As an Autistic AAC user doing AAC work, I am appalled and horrified that people are reliant on a chance encounter with an SLP on a plane in order to be introduced to AAC. Communication access is a human right. I'm glad Rachel got seated next to this father/son pair, and I'm glad she introduced AAC. She did the right things in a situation that should never have happened. There should have been communication access years ago.

By the end of the flight, he had made several requests, initiated several times, & his behaviors had reduced quite a bit. The father was astounded – clearly no one had ever tried an AAC approach with him. I gave him the paper & showed him how to use it, and he nearly cried. 6/

— Rachel R. Romeo (@RachelRRomeo) August 28, 2019

I'm happy for this family, that they have AAC now. I'm sad for this family, that this is what it took. A chance meeting with an SLP on a plane.

And you know what else concerns me?

People are sharing this like it's a heartwarming story. It's a terrifying story. Imagine how many doctors and therapists failed this family, that communication access rested on this chance encounter. Imagine how many people still don't have communication access.

This is, in fact, an important story. It's an illustration of just how dire the situation is for autistic people and our families trying to access the human right of communication. We are being "served" by people who don't know to consider communication board, who don't know to consider AAC. We are being "served" by people who see a non-speaking person who grabs things and assumes the way to go is to try to control the "behavior" rather than to provide other ways to communicate that they want those things. And we are being "served" by people who presume that non-speaking means non-thinking.

And no, I don't mean people who presume that non-speaking means intellectual disability. Non-speaking people with intellectual disabilities can use communication supports. I mean people who assume there are no thoughts worth trying to communicate, that the primary "service" needed is control over the person. It's a problem whether or not a non-speaking person actually has an intellectual disability.

So, share away. Just remember it's a story about years of communication denied and systemic problems. It's a story about a kid who didn't get to have his communication honored until he was about 10, who had his attempts at communication treated as "challenging behaviors" instead of attempts at communicating sans speech. It's a story about a chance encounter, and it's a story about everything that had to go wrong for that chance encounter to matter. This is no better than the high school robotics team making a prosthetic for a kid whose insurance denied it: good for the team, but remember why it was needed.

Share this story as an illustration of what's wrong in our system, not just as a story of one person who did a good thing.

Pretending/insisting teens (as a group) aren't sexual hurts asexual teens too

It seems pretty common for adults to refuse to acknowledge that teens, as a group, can be sexual beings. (Or to insist that even if they are, they shouldn't be and must therefore pretend not to be.) Abstinence only "health" classes? "Wait until marriage"? Every time education based on those ideas gets studied, we find it doesn't work. The exact things they're supposedly about avoiding (any result of teen sexuality, that is) wind up being the exact things that happen.

People who pay attention to the results of various approaches to sexual education have a good idea of how badly this goes for heterosexual teens. Sometimes we know how badly this goes for gay, lesbian, bi, pan, or trans teens.

What about the teens who actually don't have the urges that the educators simultaneously insist we must have, but also that we must resist?

I'm asexual. (I'm also bi/panromantic depending on the definitions of the moment, and I'm nonbinary. Queer is a useful umbrella term here.) I don't have the urge to do any sexual stuff. Does that mean the adults who insist teens be non-sexual are safe specifically for me?

Nope! You see, it's not actually respect for my ability to make my own decisions if you're only respecting my ability to make decisions you approve of. Assuming/insisting that I'm making the decisions you like for completely different reasons than I really am is also an issue. One, it's ignoring my agency. Two, you're going to predict my later decisions incorrectly and make bad decisions about what would work for me later. You're ignoring the decisions I'm actually making in favor or projecting different decisions onto me. Among other things, all this makes your advice about abstinence and waiting really irrelevant. I'm not "waiting", because that would mean I planned to do this stuff eventually. 

So: I'm not doing sexual things. I'm maybe saying "wait until marriage" because that's a somewhat socially acceptable way of saying "nope not doing the thing" but then the assumptions go to: 1) marriage is a thing I want (Maybe? Dunno) and 2) once married I'm going to do those things (NOPE). I look for advice on how to handle situations where folks my age are doing sexual things in my general vicinity and I'm not super comfortable. The advice I find isn't useful, because my reasons for not participating aren't moral. Being a repulsed asexual gives me totally different problems with sexual situations than being abstinent for religious reasons.

So, was advice from people who assumed I, as a teen, must have wanted to be sexual but shouldn't act on it useful? Nope. It was too covered in incorrect assumptions and disrespect for anyone who actually did want to be sexual (which was, in their minds, all teens.) Insistence that someone's internal thoughts and perceptions must be a certain way is neither helpful nor safe, whether or not you agree with their decisions.

Advice from people who assumed I, as a teen, must have wanted to be sexual but was under some sort of mistaken impression that I shouldn't for moral or religious reasons? Also neither useful nor particularly safe. Seriously, people who have religious reasons to prefer to wait aren't going to benefit from having their religious beliefs called nonsense. If they're trying to tell other people to wait or interfering with other people's decisions based on personal religious beliefs, that's an issue, but that's not the kind of advice I'm talking about here. And it didn't even apply to me anyways, because religion wasn't my reasoning for not having sex either! Don't assume someone's in that category, or decide they should be.

"I don't want to" isn't the same thing as "I think I shouldn't." Conflating them makes life harder for people who think either way.

Alyssa Reads Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication, Part 2

Still reading this book:

Farisco, M., & Evers, K. (Eds.). (2016). Neurotechnology and direct brain communication: New insights and responsibilities concerning speechless but communicative subjects. Routledge.

Part 1 was here, with the introduction and first chapter.

Now reading chapter 2:

Demetriou, A., Spanoudis, G., & Shayer, M. (2016). Mapping mind-brain development. In Farisco, M., & Evers, K. (Eds.) Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication: New insights and responsibilities concerning speechless but communicative subjects, 21-39.

The chapter starts off with a theory for how the mind is set up. (It's a theory I've seen before.) Thought is broadly considered as categorical, spatial, quantitative, causal, or social. Our perceptual systems are generally set up in ways that support these kinds of thought and connection-making. There's the idea that abstraction notes similarities between things, alignment actually sticks stuff together by those similarities, and then cognizance stores the stuck together stuff as its own thing. It seems like a reasonable way of thinking about how stuff works. Then they start talking about how it develops, with episodic representation, then mental representation, then rule-based representation, and then principle-based representation. 

And I'm pretty sure they're talking about how everything develops in neurotypical people, though they don't specify that. I think it would be better if people talking about neurotypical psychology and neurology explicitly said they were doing so, rather than just saying they were talking about people. For example, there's discussion of visual circuits, and aphantasiacs don't do the visual things the same way y'all think people do visual stuff. And kind of like language development people tend to assume we start at one word and build up, while some people start at phrases and break down, then remix, then build up on occasions where remixing isn't enough.

Or there's two main circuits that do verbal working memory type things, one for rehearsal (getting ready to say a thing, I guess) and one for “nonarticulatory maintenance of phonological information” (p. 29). What does this mean for AAC users? Or even neurotypicals on social media or otherwise using typed language for real-time communication? What does this mean for the students in my online classroom at AoPS? (And no, I can neither assume that my students are neurotypical nor can I assume that they're neurodivergent. I have no idea.) I wish I knew what their citation was for these two verbal working memory networks. Rehearsal is supposed to be left-lateralized (in righties or in everyone? They didn't say!) premotor-parietal, for which it would make sense to me that we'd just get premotor areas related to whatever body part is being used to communicate instead of related to the mouth, but use a similar circuit regardless of communication medium. Verbal maintenance is supposed to be bilateral, anterior-prefrontal to inferior parietal.

I wonder how the rehearsal areas might activate when using, say, a P300 speller. Would activation depend on whether the current stimulus is for the desired letter or not? How does the slower speed of typing affect the activation of and demands on working memory? Is this even the most relevant working memory circuit for P300 use? (I know working memory is relevant, but it could be a visual working memory circuit we need to care about, or one of the verbal ones, or all the parts that are in either, or only the parts that are in both. I dunno!)

Oh, come on, now we get to see theory of mind come up, where a mentalizing network is suggested to be needed to serve awareness of mental states, and that this (with alerting and orienting attention?) is key to consciousness. If I never see theory of mind theory again, it will be too soon. (I say shortly after turning in revisions to a chapter that examined the effects of of theory of mind on interpretation of autistic autobiographical narratives, which required me to deal with quite a bit of theory of mind nonsense. Why do I do this to myself?) There's apparently been research into the neuroanatomical (phrenological?) and neurochemical bases of this theory of mind thing, too. Because they cite

Abu-Akel, A., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. (2011). Neuroanatomical and neurochemical bases of theory of mind. Neuropsychologia, 49(11), 2971-2984. 

Which is apparently a well-cited article, per my looking it up. Why.

How is it “obvious” that mentalizing ability and executive control would be served by the same systems? Is it only obvious that these use the same systems in neurotypicals? Or is it therefore paradoxical to be decent at guessing how others would feel in a given situation, while also having pretty terrible executive functioning. Am I a paradox? I think it'd be interesting to be a paradox.

If salience/shifting networks are already in place in some form before birth, like Hoff et al seems to suggest, and salience networks function differently between autistic people and neurotypical people, is this one of the places we can point to neurodevelopmental differences even before birth? (I'm kind of betting it is, even if it's not one we've checked yet. There are a lot of things we don't know yet about brain networks.) Hoff et al is:

Hoff, G. E., Van Den Heuvel, M., Benders, M. J., Kersbergen, K. J., & de Vries, L. S. (2013). On development of functional brain connectivity in the young brain. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 7, 650.

I run into an autism/connectivity paper on the first page when trying to find Hoff, so bookmarking that too:

Belmonte, M. K., Allen, G., Beckel-Mitchener, A., Boulanger, L. M., Carper, R. A., & Webb, S. J. (2004). Autism and abnormal development of brain connectivity. Journal of Neuroscience, 24(42), 9228-9231.

The introduction of that paper already annoys me with the prevention/remediation nonsense, though I appreciate how it called autism research disconnected. I kind of already knew that whenever I deal with autism-related literature, I need to grab what useful bits I can while wading through messes.  

Or even the ages of transitions between levels of abstraction in thought. There's some range in typical development, but that doesn't mean that neurodivergent people will fall inside those ranges. (And we may well build up the ability to do things at one level that y'all wouldn't have, because the "next" level grants it easily and you get there by the time you need it.)

Oh, and while we can point to networks that are active in certain functions, there's no cognitive functions whose corresponding networks are totally known, even in the totally neurotypical. No, I don't think I run all the same networks for everything that a neurotypical person does. There's already some autism-related evidence that I don't, and there's starting to be some aphantasia-related evidence that I don't, too. Please, please specify when you're talking about neurotypical networks and structures. 

Part 3 is/will be here.

Alyssa Reads Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication: Part 1

I got Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication out of my university library. (I love libraries.) I got it because I do research related to brain-computer interfaces in my graduate program, and it seemed like a directly relevant book that is in my library. I didn't realize when I took it out that it'd be as interdisciplinary as it was, but, hey, added bonus. I like mixing my fields up a bit.

Farisco, M., & Evers, K. (Eds.). (2016). Neurotechnology and direct brain communication: New insights and responsibilities concerning speechless but communicative subjects. Routledge.

Anyways. I'm reading, have some reactions from their introduction:

I think the mention of how brain and mind relate, as being philosophically considered the same thing, substantially different, or somewhere in between, is a nice touch, as is the admission that science tends towards taking the two to be pretty much the same. Maybe I'll get to see more discussion related to that in later chapters? It'd be cool.

One of my classmates told me that when she did research related to "motor imagery" brain computer interfaces, while most participants did start by imagining a certain motion, they didn't necessarily keep imagining that same motion as they kept using the system. The signal kept coming from the same place, but what they were doing to make that signal changed. I think that says something about localization.

They ask if it's possible to interpret what someone is thinking directly from brain signals. Thinking as someone who does work in brain computer interfaces, I don't know if that might someday be possible, but what we have right now is nowhere near that. It's a few characters of text per minute, when things work well, which isn't always  the case. (As opposed to the 60+ words per minute I type with my hands, or the over a hundred words per minute of typical conversational speech.)

And yay paying attention to the assumptions used in neurotechnology. I like it when people recognize that technologies aren't conceptually neutral.

I wonder what age range they're taking as infants, and how they're determining that infants don't understand language. Because the coordinated movements involved in speaking are an issue, and receptive language tends to be way ahead of expressive language for quite a bit of child development. That is, people understand more than they can say. And I spoke at six months. It's true that speaking at six months is unusual, but if we're doing the "interrogate assumptions" thing, we should interrogate this assumption too. Especially when it's being used to question the use of the word "communication" when applied to babies. And especially when the first chapter goes on to discuss neurological responses that suggest hearing infants do recognize spoken language.



And now the first chapter:

Lagercrantz, H. & Padilla, N. (2016). The emergence of consciousness: from foetal to newborn life. In Farisco, M., & Evers, K (Eds.) Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication (pp. 21-34). Routledge.

The authors ask what it's like to be a baby. I don't know what it's like to be a baby -- I don't remember anything from when I was that young, and even though I was talking a bit at six months, I don't think my parents asked me what it was like to be a baby. Maybe if I meet another six month old who talks, I'll ask them what it's like to be a baby.

Oh no. Oh no. Early identification of "risk" for autism and then early intervention. In a world that used a model more like the Foundation for Divergent Minds one, I'd be totally cool with early identification, and early actions to support people. But I know what model is really used in early intervention, and it increases our risk of PTSD. So, no. Here's another assumption I'd like to see challenged, thank you.

Discussion of whether dreaming during REM sleep is a conscious or unconscious state is interesting. However, I do want to question the assumption that insight and self-reflection are absent during dreams. Lucid dreaming (dreaming while aware that it's a dream) is a thing, and both insight and self-reflecting are totally possible in that state.

EEG and NIRS are the same technologies we tend to use in our lab, because they're portable. It's interesting to see them come up in infant studies for similar reasons.

I do wonder how they're deciding certain neuronal connections are required for consciousness, as opposed to being required in order to communicate consciousness to outsiders. Those aren't the same thing. See also, "I heard it all" or "I understood it all" from people who were in comas, as well as from non-speaking autistic folks who get access to communication later.

"Resting" neural activity is definitely a thing. There are always, always neurons firing in alive people. That's why, when we do neuroimaging studies, there's often a comparison between activity at rest and activity during whatever task we're asking people to do. It's because things are still happening when we're resting. Autonomic breathing control, for example, is still a thing. So is sensory processing. I wonder what my rest state looks like compared to that of my neurotypical classmates.

"However, dreaming is tightly linked to the ability to imagine things visually, which is less likely to occur in the foetus and extremely preterm infant." (p. 12).

Wait, really? People with minds eyes confuse me. My imagination doesn't get to plug into the monitor anytime other than while I'm asleep. I don't have the ability to imagine things visually when awake, and I can't make an extra layer of intentionally imagining more things visually while dreaming, either. But I do dream, and often in color. My other senses often work in dreams too -- things like taste and touch. I would never have come up with an association between dreaming and visual imagination on my own, even though "do you dream?" is one of the first questions I'm asked when I tell people I'm aphantasiac and explain what that means.

There are some interesting sensory findings here. Apparently typical newborns already have some capacity for facial recognition, though their visual acuity isn't great. (I wonder if they're better at recognizing faces than I am. And at what point developmental/congenital prosopagnosia can be detected, if typical newborns already have some facial recognition. See Meltzoff, A. N. & Moore, M. K. 1977. Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198, 75-8; Farroni, T. Chiarelli, A. M., Lloyd-Fox, S., Massaccesi, S., Merla, A., Di Gangi, V., Mattarello, T., Faraguna, D., & Johnson, M. H. 2013. Infant cortex responds to other humans from shortly after birth. Sci Rep, 3. and stuff citing them for references if I ever try to look more closely at this, I guess?)

I think it's pretty cool that infants can start acquiring another language if someone reads and tells them stories in that other language. It makes sense, considering how many kids are bilingual from a young age due to immersion in multiple languages. 

"Even the preterm infant ex utero may open its eyes and establish a minimal eye contact with its mother and show other signs of conciousness like cortical responses to pain." (p. 16)

Wait, we're using eye contact as a sign of conciousness now? I'm too autistic for this. Nope.


Part 2 is/will be here!

"But that won't fly in [high school/college/the working world/etc...]!"

When people have somewhat unusual methods of ... doing anything, really, there are often authority figures who will try to stop it with the excuse that it won't fly in some other context, so it needs to be stopped in this one, too.

It's bullshit.

First, different contexts are different. A K-12 classroom is not a university classroom is not a construction site is not a factory floor is not an online chatroom is not a floor full of cubicles is not a ballroom. Just because I shouldn't waltz on a construction site, that doesn't mean you should tell me not to waltz in a ballroom because it wouldn't fly on a construction site. Just because some people will (incorrectly) assume my iso headphones (noise reduction, but not cancelling or music) mean I'm not paying attention, that doesn't mean I shouldn't wear them on a factory floor or at a construction site. It doesn't actually mean I should skip them at school or in an office, either. It's an assistive tool for sensory processing issues, and willful continued misinterpretations once I explain that to you once are not my problem.

Second, the context you cite may well consider the unusual method a non-issue. Some people like to tell me that being nonbinary might sound cool on the internet, but at work no one would tolerate that. They're just wrong. I use "they/them" pronouns and either "Mx." or no honorific at all as a teacher. I do the same as a graduate student. I get asked about it on occasion, but it's a non-issue. Your statement that it won't fly in [insert other context here] may well just be wrong. Others would like to tell me that sitting on the floor or under tables won't be tolerated later, so kids with disabilities need to be table-ready as a first priority, ahead of things like getting communication supports. I sit under an actual literal table when I have to go into the lab in graduate school. No one cares.

Third, even if the people in this other context have an issue, have you considered the possibility that they're wrong to do so? The administrators at a university where I studied abroad were of the opinion that I shouldn't come, because "people like that shouldn't be in college." (People like that meant autistic people, in this case.) I feel OK assuming just about any specific autistic trait they took issue with was a cover for them not wanting autistic students at all. Or a rock climbing instructor takes an issue with flapping (without letting go of the person on the wall!) and being left-handed. They're just wrong. Why are you backing up their wrong-ness?

Different environments have different expectations for actual reasons, they might not have the expectations you'd think they have, and other people are just as capable of having bullshit expectations as we are. "That wouldn't fly at work, so I'm not letting it fly in my classroom" is not a good argument. 

In defense of "microlabels"

This is about being an online math teacher, or a graduate teaching assistant, or a physics lab assistant, and it's about being a panromantic asexual nonbinary (or just queer.)

I'm a teacher. When people ask me what I do, I can say I teach. Sometimes they'll want more details, sometimes they won't.

I'm queer. Sometimes people want more detail than that, and sometimes they won't. Sometimes I'll give it to them, and sometimes I won't.

I can tell you that I teach mathematics. I can tell you I'm pan, or that I'm bi. (I consider both statements to be true of me.)

I can tell you that I teach online. I can tell you that I'm ace.

Or maybe I can tell you that I teach online math classes. I'm panromantic and asexual.

I taught in a lab. I'm transgender.

More specifically, I was an assistant in that lab. More specifically, I'm nonbinary.

I've been a lab assistant at 天津师范大学 (Tianjin Normal University), and at the University of Rhode Island. My autism does affect how I do gender, so gendervague is a word I sometimes use to describe exactly how I'm nonbinary.

Obviously, teaching experiences, gender, and sexuality aren't identical. However, when you specifically don't need to know that I did one of my lab assistant jobs in Chinese, you probably aren't going to tell me that it's divisive for me to specify that much, or that I'm just a special snowflake, or anything in that area. People do say that when I come up with words like gendervague.

Not every detail of who I am is going to matter to every person. That's fine. You might not care that I assisted a physics lab in China, using Mandarin. My supervisor in the electrical engineering lab does, because she speaks Mandarin too, and it's useful for her to know I understand the language. You might not care that I'm gendervague. Another reader, themselves autistic, questioning their gender, and wondering if they just might not "get" gender, could find the existence of the word useful. My issue comes up when sharing those details in a mixed audience, where some people will find those extra details to be of interest, is met with outright hostility from the people who don't need them.

Just because it's not information you need, that doesn't mean it's a useless word.

I'm apparently an #AAC talk example.

I took a class on augmentative and alternative communication in fall 2017. It was a tiny class, with only three students, which made it practically an independent study. Pretty early on in the class, I watched this video.

This quote stuck out, just a few minutes in. “Sometimes we find ourselves on the floor or under a desk because that's where somebody wants to be.” The context? The speaker is talking about how there aren't any prerequisites for AAC use, including behavioral prerequisites. 

I laughed, and then I got worried.

I laughed because I spend quite a bit of time on the floor, possibly under a desk. I hung out under my cloak, under the table, before my measure theory (graduate math class) final exam. I tend to sit on the floor when given the choice. People in the wearable biosensing lab (the lab my major professor runs) don't just know to look for me under a table if I'm in the lab. They know which table I'll be under with my laptop and whatever I'm reading, or with whatever object I'm doing emergency sewing on. My advisor is quite used to the fact that I sit on the floor during my meetings with him. 

Essentially, I represent this statement. I am the student who is often on the floor or under a desk. I'm also studying for my PhD in neuroscience and passed my comprehensive exams last week, so I'm generally not in too much danger of being denied access to communication based on behavioral prerequisites. (I am at risk of being denied access to communication based on the fact that I can usually speak well, so people could assume I'm faking when I need AAC. That's a problem, but it's a different one.)

My worry is for the people who are in danger of being denied access to communication based on ideas about prerequisites. I understand what it means that a kid hanging out under a desk is the example given here. I have to assume people have been denied access to communication systems for "behavioral" reasons including a tendency to sit on the floor or under desks. I even have to assume this is common. Otherwise, there would be no need to explain: yes, you can get on the floor or under a desk while working on communication supports, if that's where someone wants to be.

That's scary. I know my making it through school has a lot to do with my being passed off with the idea that "gifted kids are weird." I know how easily it could have gone differently. I've written before about one way it could have gone wrong: failing special education kindergarten. 

What about all the people where it did go differently? What about all the people for whom it's still going differently?