There's a video taking You Tube by storm: "In My Language" by Amanda Baggs. Baggs is part of an increasingly visible and highly networked community of autistics. She works with the Internet as well as innovations like type-to-speech software to let us know that she has her own language, but we don't consider her a "thinking being" unless she uses our language. You can see and hear her using both languages on this video, which she shot, edited and uploaded by herself. Also, there's a great article about her in Wired. Her message is that she is not "trapped in her own world," she just interacts differently with the world we all inhabit.

I learned about this concept 15 years ago at Little City Foundation in Chicago when my friend (and API board member) Alan Dachman was running Project Vital, an award-winning video program for people with developmental challenges. Dachman was highly motivated to see that people with developmental challenges have the opportunity to participate in mainstream culture. His vision was grand: "To exclude the point of view of any individual based on a misperception of his/her ability to function 'normally' skews our basic concept of human reality. Inclusion is not charity, but an essential philosophy that only makes life richer and more meaningful for all."

You can read more about what I learned about this sector in a story I wrote in 1993 for High Performance: "Impatience with Things as They Are: Art faces a developmental challenge." It's on CAN at:
http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/1999/12/impatience_with.php

Thanks to Jill Burnham for telling us about these items:
"In My Language" by Amanda Baggs
"The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know" by David Wolman

   

Comments

Linda,

Thanks for posting this. I can’t help wonder, having recently seen “stroke of insight” if autistic people aren’t operating primarily from their right brains and rest of us left.

Lynne Elizabeth | March 26, 2008 03:32 PM

   

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