I have a keen interest in autism. Partly because I connect with it on a very personal level, but also because it is a communication issue.

Today, I came across an example of two communication technologies being used extremely effectively. A combination of a YouTube video and a blog. It’s not an unusual combination, but the juxtaposition of the two in this scenario is particularly noteworthy:

There’s a myth that you can tell a lot about an autistic person by looking at them. I’ve been trying to break down that myth by juxtaposing my appearance with my writing.

It is a provocative combination. The beauty of writing in this case is that it can be totally divided from appearance. It’s a direct look into a mind and even if you have already seen the video, it’s still easy enough to separate the two in your mind; but not so much that you would miss the message.

This is the kind of thing you can say:

That would be ten years of doing incomprehensible things, for reasons I could not understand, with a vague fear that something awful would happen if I stopped, and being continually bombarded with more information than I could understand or handle. This is not to say there were not good things going on in this time period, but outside of specific incidents, I mostly remember a blur of shapes and sounds and words and pain. (Severe physical pain, which went untreated for more like 20 years.)

And through video:

Her blog is here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 0:27 UTC and is filed under Communication, Live Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.