Sutherland: Sometimes communication difficulties were due to staff's normative assumptions about communication. So if someone could speak a bit they assumed they should be able to speak more, instead of trying to use AAC or other communication methods. #INSAR2025 - ThreadSky

thinkingautism.com • 4 days ago

Sutherland: Sometimes communication difficulties were due to staff's normative assumptions about communication. So if someone could speak a bit they assumed they should be able to speak more, instead of trying to use AAC or other communication methods.

#INSAR2025

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thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Sutherland: So even though the supported people provided many different channels of communication, the staff did not always recognize those openings. And miscommunications ensued, especially when autistic "behaviors" were involved.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Sutherland: However, both staff and supported people had friends amongst the other group. Successful communication was an important part of friendship and rapport.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Sutherland: Both parties needed to adapt their communication styles and preferences to accommodate each other for successful engagement. Sometimes staff adopted more autistic styles of communication and behavior as a result.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Sutherland: Who gets to be the expert? Who gets to speak for the autistic people? Sustained self-advocacy is often very difficult for autistic people with high support needs.

Very important to center the #neurodiversity and double empathy problem paradigms.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Now: AAC user and UW college student Grant Blasko and Dr. Vikram Jaswal.

Blasko, via AAC: He is trying to broaden his understanding of complex issues, grateful to be included and for support of fellow panel members.

Jaswal works at UVA on communication in folks like Blasko.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Blasko and Jaswal: Why is this panel happening? Well, some people here don't understand how autistic with HSNs can participate, and don't understand the #neurodiversity paradigm.

Previous panelists talked about how to include autistic people with HSNs successfully in research.

#INSAR2025

autisticenough.bsky.social•3 days ago

And w/o denigrating the urgency of HSN people’s needs, mostly speaking autistics like me lose speech more frequently than non-autistics may think. However short my periods of speech loss may be, at those times my self-advocacy skills dip too.

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