Monthly Archives: February 2023

Loud Advocates

berkeley

UC Berkeley campus

Many good stories involve heroes who are very strong or all dynamic in front of a crowd or athletic or amazingly handsome. This story involves two heroes who are incredibly brave. What makes them brave is their willingness to use their smarts and go into overwhelming situations to share those smarts with the mainstream.

I’m talking about David Teplitz and Hari Srinivasan, two non-speaking autistic people who just graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, charting a new course for Cal and now going further in their efforts to prove to the world what non-speaking autistic people can do. Thanks to them, I’ve got hope that there’s greatness in store for me.

Hari and David show that there are big misunderstandings about non-speaking autism. In the 1980s, doctors largely thought that not being able to talk meant their patients were intellectually disabled.

In fact, according to Ronit Molko in a Learn Behavioral blog post from March 10, 2022, roughly 70% of non-speaking autistics were considered mentally retarded at that time. But doctors now know better and only 30% of non-speaking autistics get the intellectual disability diagnosis. Rather than a lack of comprehension, limited speech stems from apraxia, or a breakdown between the brain and the mouth that makes it impossible to get words out. Language isn’t the challenge.

The major hurdle is finding a way to “talk.” Hari and David have both learned to type. They use NaturalReader on their laptops to say what they type. I rely on writing by hand but am working on typing, too. Both are slow but way better than nothing! And Hari makes a good point: autistic brains move pretty fast, so they can take in information really fast.

This helps balance things out and makes it possible to “manage academics time-wise,” Hari points out on his blog, Uniquely Hari. It’s conversations that are tricky because they require such fast outputs.

But conversations and the understanding shown by others can change. What if someone could be more patient and wait for a response? Or if all people were willing to go back to a topic once a non-speaker was ready to share? That’s how Hari and David pushed their classmates at Cal.

Hari even helped co-teach a class, mostly preparing material in advance but needing students to be flexible with real-time questions. Important words are worth waiting for so you shouldn’t discount thoughts that are conveyed slowly. That’s what Cal wants its students to know and what Hari and David demonstrate.

They’re also doing something majorly awesome for me by demonstrating the mother load of the year. They’ve shown me that I’m not alone. There are other people just like me who can’t talk but master language, who don’t speak but are loud advocates, who, against all odds, reach incredible heights. My journey starts now!

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