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{"id":9686,"date":"2022-07-12T14:44:22","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T14:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/07\/12\/the-future-we-were-promised\/"},"modified":"2022-07-12T14:44:24","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T14:44:24","slug":"the-future-we-were-promised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/07\/12\/the-future-we-were-promised\/","title":{"rendered":"The future we were promised"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/7\/12\/23188738\/ipad-speech-apraxia-assistive-tech-accessibility<\/a>
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My son is 15. He is also an autistic boy with Down syndrome. From the moment he was born, well-informed experts, well-intentioned fellow parents, and a whole universe of marketing suggested that technology would provide answers to many of the problems we\u2019d end up facing. <\/p>\n

This is not the technological future we were promised when he was born. We thought by now we\u2019d have devices, apps, and pharmaceuticals that would help him learn and communicate more easily, while also keeping him safer in a hostile world. Technology can provide disabled people with wondrous new tools, but only \u2014 as with so many kinds of innovation \u2014 when they are married to systems that take into account our complex and varied humanity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true, of course, that he relies heavily on technology \u2014 though maybe not the kind of tech that first comes to mind. When it comes to access, the most important devices are plastic straws and velcro straps on shoes. Elastic waistbands are also pretty great. He used to rely on plastic Mardi Gras beads to stim with<\/a>, motions that in fact make the world more accessible by giving him needed input. These days he uses rubber stretchy strings<\/a> that have a more pleasing weight. When it comes to therapy, he\u2019s doing amazing work developing verbal speech with a collection of colored tubes and shapes<\/a> that signify specific sounds and can be used to cue him (by placing them on his lips and tongue) to position his tongue in order to make the sounds he wants. He also uses a $3 hand mirror we bought at the local drugstore, giggling as he watches his own face. <\/p>\n

Like many teens, he watches YouTube or streams music on Amazon. His favorite videos include music and video from the Just Dance<\/em> games and the entire corpus of Sesame Street<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>Ernie and Bert, which are amazing short-form explorations of emotion, language, humor, and daily living. Sometimes he watches them in German or Dutch. He used to watch superhero movies but has lately shifted into a creature-feature phase, finding clips of monster fights from the Jurassic Park<\/em> and King Kong<\/em> franchises. He could stream the movies of course, but he likes to skip to the good parts and re-watch them. In all cases, he likes to dramatically re-enact his favorite dances, fights, and puppet skits in the room as he watches. Honestly, it can be a bit loud, but what teenage boy doesn\u2019t annoy his parents with his media choices and volume sometimes?<\/p>\n

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