6:03pm May 25, 2014

Have you ever…?

youneedacat:

Have you ever been in a situation where you try to communicate, and everyone sees it as a trick? Either you’re a trained dog who has been trained to type out certain words with no comprehension. Or else you’re actually not communicating at all, it’s just a computer trick, or it’s someone else typing the words for you, or anything but that you’re actually communicating. Have you ever been given a Turing test in public? Have you ever failed it due to sheer indignation?

I haven’t done so myself, but you’re reminding me of this essay by the late Anne McDonald, an Australian disability rights activist who had cerebral palsy and communicated through FC, and had to prove to her state’s supreme court that she was really the one communicating, in order to win her release from the institution where her parents had put her.

She wrote: “On the third day, in response to a personal appeal from the Senior Master of the Supreme Court, I passed a message, with only minor changes; the message given was the two random words ‘string’ and ‘quince’, and the message I spelt was the two words ‘string’ and ‘quit’. That was enough for the court.”

I had a guy talk to me for awhile and decide that everything I typed was some kind of trick. I was typing rapidly and nobody was touching me, but he thought that my computer was somehow programmed to look like it was giving intelligent responses. So we were in a museum, and he asked me “Well can you describe what we just saw, then?” I was too furious to be able to type anything at that point, my friend who also typed to communicate kind of hid behind a pillar because he was afraid of being tested as well, and my staff person yelled at him “OF COURSE SHE CAN!” And the guy just stared at me, grinned, gloated, and said “I thought not” and walked off.

Luckily, I type independently and rapidly enough that I’ve never been challenged in a legal setting. I can’t imagine the sheer bloody-mindedness it took to do what Anne did. I have enough trouble communicating around people who don’t believe me, that … yeah. It wouldn’t go well even though I practically never need physical support to communicate.