Your support will help grow this grassroots, crowd-sourced work in progress, the efforts of a growing community of individuals with disabilities who communicate most effectively with tools other than speech and their allies.
© 2018-2020 United for Communication Choice
DJ Savarese Tells His Story in New Documentary ‘Deej’
Iowa Public Radio
“David James ‘DJ’ Savarese is a poet, prose writer, and recent alumni of Oberlin College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a double major in Anthropology and Creative Writing. He is also autistic and nonspeaking. DJ shares his story through the new documentary Deej, which just received a Peabody Award and will be shown at the Julien Dubuque International Film festival on Saturday, April 28th. The documentary, which was produced by Savarese in partnership with Robert Rooy, follows him through high school and into college as he confronts society’s obstacles to inclusion and chases his dream of a college education.”
Link to story and audio file (30:55): https://bit.ly/2rKVIAw
Camarillo Boy, 10, Shares His Story of Autism with Ventura College Students
Ventura County Star (California)
Ten-year-old Camarillo, California author Diego Peña, who communicates by typing on an iPad and by pointing to letters on a letterboard, speaks at Ventura College for the 2018 Diversity in Culture Festival about his best-selling book on Amazon, Anatomy of Autism.
“It is the lifeline to love, friendship, needs and success,” said Diego through his talker. “It is my right as a person to always have communication, no matter how controversial it is.”
Link to story and video (0:56): https://bit.ly/2yI2ayK
Creating Welcoming Communities
On February 2-3, 2018, a group of 7 nonspeaking autistics from Growing Kids Therapy Center (a.k.a. “The Tribe”) and 18 University of Virginia undergraduates gathered in Charlottesville to discuss, among other things, what role empathy and compassion should play in creating welcoming communities. They were joined by Dr. Barry Prizant, author of “Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism.” The two groups of students are participants in the second cohort of a year-long seminar called “The Science & Lived Experience of Autism.” This video captures highlights from their third in-person meeting.
For more information about the collaboration, visit: http://jaswallab.wordpress.com/resour…
‘Communication is a Basic Human Right’: How this Man with Nonverbal Autism Found His Voice
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — Twenty-one-year-old California resident Ido Kedar says, “My mom and dad found me a teacher who taught me to type independently. Then it became really hard for the experts to refute. But it took time to get to this level of proficiency.”
Read the article: https://bit.ly/2I4xYif
Nonverbal and College Bound
The Daily Cal (California)
Column in daily student newspaper of the University of California Berkeley by junior Hari Srinivasan about his journey to and experience at UC Berkeley so far as a nonspeaking autistic student, and that of fellow nonspeaking autistic student David Teplitz. Hari types to communicate, which he learned at the age of 13.
“Some of my academic accommodations include additional time for exams, use of a iPad (it’s my communication device), a laptop (I have no handwriting skills) and the use of specialized software such as MathType for my statistics and other math exams. I’m also given a notetaker for classes and allowed to take fewer courses every semester.”
Link: https://bit.ly/2yFdlIL
Communication Conundrum
The Daily Cal (California)
UC Berkeley student staff writer for The Daily Cal student newspaper, Hari Srinivasan, is nonspeaking and communicates by typing. In this piece, he explains his neurology and characterizes intelligence in terms of “input” and “output” systems.
“We autistics may yet surprise you, and we have a lot to contribute to society. I shouldn’t have had to wait for a chance meeting as a teen to lead me to communication. My special education teachers should have taught me typing instead of trying to restrict me to the dozen picture icons they decided I needed. Of course, other autism issues such as sensory dysregulation can make the act of typing itself hard. I am still a one-finger typer for the most part, and it took me a really long time to type out this one article.”
Link: https://bit.ly/2KfXNMY