Do I want to To Communicate differently

Without being semi-speaking as an autistic person your speech is always different. Autism is a disability that affects your communication no matter your ability to speak for this I ask ‘Do I want to communicate differently?’ A reflection on communication tools and universial accessiblity

By no means can be classified as a non-speaker or a semi-speaker, or I think, for these reasons just listed it makes it harder to define communication differences and disabling communicative differences. It can be draining. As my autistic diagnoses would be defined to as low support needs. I’ve had no noticeable delays in speech. I can be defined as a fast speaker, a loud speaker. As well as being autistic I’m dyspraxic too which does impact speech and so does having anxiety. Both of which can make either formulating the ideas out in my head and making sense of them to make my words understandable for others to see or hear and what I feel I wish to say or comment. Stress and anxiety when my brain feels overwhelmed and flooded impacts this. I can stutter and freeze up and only in hindsight I worked out what I wish to say.

I recognise that I carry a privilege. I don’t have the same difficulties, struggles and challenges than ‘high support needs’ autistic and neurodivergent people. I have the ability to communicate my wants and needs in the same manner which my neurotypical peers communicate through speech even if recognising what my wants and needs are harder to sense than my allistic peers. It’s know easier for me to assimilate with my peers through having the ability to mask. I am able to not visibly show my autistic traits and this can mean any disabling parts of being autistic go unrecognised. For myself the most disabling parts of being autistic can com from what many peers in the autistic community can relate to which is masking. Trying to socially assimilate with my allistic and neurotypical peers can be draining. People don’t see how draining the allistic world can be with energy being drained in over-stimulating environments of where we react negatively ton sensory input like intense light, sound, touch and feel, to stress co-occurring social anxiety, trauma and depression to not reading or understanding social cues and conventions to our allistic neurotypical peers. The energy that this drains is more than our allistic neurotypical peers for such scenarios and situations that can cause burnout, panic attacks, meltdowns and shutdowns from such cases.

Autistic people are more prone to stress and anxiety than our allistic peers and due to the conditions and environments we have to endure we are more prone to have mental illness and suffer with mental health issues. This can make it hard to communicate our needs when we need help at the most. I know I’m privileged that in a high stress emergency that I could find the words and speak even how distressing or challenging it may be. Autistic people can feel excluded and isolated because of our communicational differences I know I would never relate to the experiences of non-speaking or semi-speaking autistic people I don’t know of their life experiences of their experiences of  being excluded, denied my basic right to consent and deprived of they  want and need because I can speak up and find my voice and use the ability to vocalise my needs when many wont listen to however a non-speaker communicates. If you don’t always have access to tools to communicate for yourself you are being deprived of your rights.

At the centre of disability justice and disability equality, equity and inclusion must include the basic right to communicate for yourself and the universal provision of basic tools of communication inline with food and water as this is how disabled people can access their human rights. We need to think of what applying this universally looks like. In disabled social and political rights community of speaking of liberal, progressive policies that set to liberate disabled people from inequality and injustices they have to endure advocate for the social model of disability that sees disability not through the traditional scientific medicalised models but as a social model and that significantly applies to the autistic rights movement in recent times and where technology can be the source that aids autistic people and a solution and could be for myself.

As I made clear I don’t fall into the community of autistic people who are semi-speaking and non-speaking. I’m a podcast host who has interviewed peers in the neurodivergent community hours on end. I am trying to carve out a career in podcasting and digital media production and have an interest in doing journalism. From the age of 12 is when I started listening to radio regularly becoming a listener by choice and liked the idea of being a radio DJ some of my peers thought it would be a good idea as I have interest in the medium. Falling in love with the medium and is something chosen over the television for many of occasions. I find the choices of television can be dull and tedious and require a lot more concentration unlike what I found with listening to radio, music and podcasts which all formed parts of my focused interests. I’ve over the years become a music obsessive liking a myriad of genres spawning from jazz, hip-hop, house, pop, drum and bass, indie and alternative and I probably could go on and this is in part down to radio listening to stations like Radio 1, 6 Music, 1 Xtra, Radio 3, Jazz FM starting of with the legendary Zane Lowe and Annie Macmanus to Phil Taggart, John Kennedy, Jamz Supernova, Elizabeth Alkar, MistaJam, Matt Wilkinson to name but a few. Radio has also been place of companionship and entertainment for the laughable duo who became religious listening for a decade who really could make a difference in my day.

I know of very few autistic people who are on the radio Alex West (Reprezent), Jacob Edwards (Gaydio) and Ashleigh Storie (BBC Radio Scotland) are two to name U.K based presenters that come to mind. It feels an area where few are to name, it makes me think how accessible is the world of radio for autistic people? I know there’s more neurodivergent voices in podcasting it allows us to re-record, re-work, plan, prepare and explore areas of our interest and feels more on our terms. The idea of live television or radio could fill with a sense of dread the unpredictable off the cuff moves to make being in tune with tight links, interviews, a lot of things to read and listen to it could feel like utter chaos. In her book ‘Illuminated’ former broadcaster and model now editor of the digital magazine ‘Frank’ was recently diagnosed as autistic after her son was diagnosed years before. Like most women she was diagnosed in mid-life where for decades she learnt the ways of masking and how to socially assimilate. Sykes in her memoir made clear that she wouldn’t be retuning to the world of presenting television where previously she did daytime television programming and prime time Saturday night formats. She reflects on how hard it was doing such programmes struggling in silence with lights and the intensity of the work schedule that burnt her out and how hard it was broadcasting with a earpiece with a producer speaking in your ear while simultaneously doing interviews. During her broadcasting career she loathed doing commercial radio doing competition formats links working going to the ad commercial breaks.

I’d like to assume I’m warming and limbering up to something of the sort one day of radio and a a successful career in podcasting. Through podcasting I’ve been able to learn a lot about myself and how I communicate. The best thing I enjoy about doing podcasting is doing the interviews, this is where I feel most comfortable talking to down the camera lens or into a microphone. It’s the important bit but I look at my peers in the neurodivergent community who do Tik-Tok or YouTube videos which is another world away from my comfort zone. What I’ve learnt for myself is ask, listen, summarise and share as how I communicate on my podcast. One thing I find that many others I have that I have not is much to say in an articulate way and this is realms of words. I do face a barrier of confidence and confidence and anxiety can be quite disabling.

It took me eight years from my autism diagnoses and most probably ten years from my dyspraxia diagnoses to be open about it. There was a lot of fear within myself of not knowing how to speak about my autism to friend, family and to the people I was in school with if my memory served me well I was in comprehensive schools where in my class I was a accompanied by someone who was dyspraxic in class for five years and another student who was autistic diagnosed then with the same diagnostic term as myself as ‘Asperger’s syndrome’. Even when they mentioned their diagnoses I did not know how to make a conversation that I am too dyspraxic, I am too autistic. This also happened when I was in sixth form where I could have told another autistic peer I was autistic but I didn’t.

When I came out as autistic I did it online. As a good friend after not speaking since comprehensive school started talking online where I ended up disclosing my diagnoses that’s how I did it not by speaking in the conventional sense. Whilst I’ve had the ability always to talk never seen as selective mutism or having non-speaking episodes there has always been somethings I only reserved to relatives in my trust circle and most always my mother. When it comes from things that have made me sad, upset and angered me I always found it hard being vulnerable and expressing what I am really feeling and this is where most of my communication struggles stem from. I would struggle to tell a doctor or teacher my problems and as a child was reliant on my mother advocating for me solving some of my problems. At a time with psychiatrist or doctor or teacher could say write things down but at that time I wasn’t comfortable with writing my worries down on paper that sounded terrifying. I wasn’t then as comfortable in pending my words as I am now. I actually feel bit more comfortable doing it typing than on pad and pen because there is a way of releasing without the high octane of wave of emotions not facing the emotions speaking does.With typing I can work and script with what I wish to say or need to say when I’m to be vulnerable I got flustered, get messy with my words and voice quivers getting teary or and voice gets shaky. When I speak its like first draft and not what I want to sound it out.

When I editing my podcast I have been left cringing at hearing how many ‘um…’, ‘urgh…’, ‘like…’, ‘you know..’ and the ultimate cringe worthy ‘you know like…’ causing more time spent editing my podcast episodes more than it should.  Editing with Descript, a multi-media editing software that allows you to edit a video or audio by inputting a file of video and audio extracting the speech detected in the uploaded file to allow you to edit it looking like a script. It’s more like editing a Microsoft word document or Google docs document rather than the clunky exhaustive editing of  using GarageBand which was the software I started using for free for podcasting editing. I could be in the position of becoming easily irritated by my voice and the chaos mess of words trying to drip out of my mind and working to form a sentence and the point. I would spend hours going around snipping and cutting out any lengthy gaps or repetitive gap phrases and utter tosh manually clicking on lines and deleting. It’s much easier to do it now using Descript which allows me to edit a the transcript and produce a transcript, create accurate subtitled videos and audio file that has allowed me to start to begin to put episodes and content in different mediums in podcast feed, to video channel and written blogs. Descript uses artificial intelligence to detect words, phrases and language in an audio file to allow you to edit the file. I feel it’s a true game-changer and I feel artificial intelligence can have a helping hand in my content production and communication.

As I made clear many times I know the sound of my voice I should to be use it as of my choice and agency sometimes not speaking orally can save you some spoons and agency if low spoons, feeling burnt out with increased feelings of stress and anxiety should be able to access alternative tools of communication and to harness that for whatever of my own choosing. I’m interesting in finding a way of using the sound of my voice to generate an artificial intelligence version of my voice. A personalised and customised version of my own voice. This could make things much much easier for myself on a multitude of things that could aid in allowing myself concessions to unmask or pressure myself to think that speaking has to be a default and it’s something to aspire to. I think it could allow me to be more productive not lazy how some might assume the idea it could allow me to create more  audio and podcasting content that spares up social spoons for focusing on using my own voice to focus on the interviews and important conversations that happen live in real time. It could be classed as trying to clone my voice. Someone could easily cast an assumption that I could use artificial intelligence to trick and fool you into that I’m not actually recording any of my podcast episodes and typing a script out to use the sound of my voice to make it into a podcast episode.

This isn’t ‘lazy podcasting’ not of the sort. I know that the art of deception of what has come from a persons mind and is the truth is going to shape the future of digital technology evolution of the near future. We are starting to see how apps and technology allow you to mock up fake speeches and statements from the sound of prominent celebrities that include Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Kanye West and Beyoncé. It’s becoming easier to use software to make convincing footage of events and things that never really happened. We could already be losing the ability to see what’s real. Regardless of this I think there is importance in trusting technology and embracing it in ways that can help me as a disabled autistic person.

Already with AAC apps that allow non-speaking to semi-speaking to communicate through an app on a phone or most commonly a tablet through clicking on pictures, words and phrases and spelling out things that you wish to say and ask for things you want or need. People maybe familiar with that with AAC software the voices have historically be used are monotone computerised robot sounding with a generic English accent and not representative of the regional dialects where non-speaking people feel when they speak through their tablet they sound like no one in their communities they grown up with and it sounds unnatural that if they were to speak it’s not their voice. So much so to give AAC technology users the voice that matches with their identity there has recently been a move to have people in areas across the country to donate a digital bank of audio of them speaking so they can give the user a local natural sounding voice that fits their identity which has been a success.

Part of me would love to try such technology but to use my own voice. It’s not something I wouldn’t use all the time but in burnout, stressful and anxious situations it would most certainly be resourceful regardless of how much any autistic person can speak such technology should be accessible to all regardless of diagnoses or not as getting such technology access is filled with many barriers with many priced out on being able to access it. Anyone needs to be able to access this technology.There’s economic privilege a with getting accessible tools to communicating as an autistic person with AAC apps, software and devices with high prices and are hard to get these devices through disability service having to be means tested and apply for these things with putting on a waiting lists to get such devices. These technologies because to an extent feel means tested these means of communication feel gate-kept as you’re expected to use your words. AAC apps should be free and universially accessible and something that Google and Apple should be able to offer it as an accessibility feature on their phone and tablets operating software.