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10:48am July 13, 2014
cr4shkitten asked: Is it okay for someone who doesn't really need a piece of accessibility equipment to use it if it makes them feel better? I am autistic (formally diagnosed high-functioning but only because I'm considered an "achiever") and very well able to speak but I am carrying a netbook with speech synthesis software with me anywhere I go because being able to type out and re-read what I am about to say helps me not forgetting what I was talking about mid-sentence because I get distracted by something.

Different people will have different answers to this question.  But from my perspective, emphatically, yes.  It’s okay to use any piece of technology for any reason, in my book, because there shouldn’t be anything special about, say, a wheelchair, compared to a bicycle, that makes a wheelchair a restricted item and a bicycle not.

But even if I were to think assistive tech should be confined to disabled people, your use is a perfectly good use of it and you shouldn’t feel bad about it.  If it makes communication easier in any way, then in a way you do probably need it.  Just because you’re not 100% nonverbal 100% of the time doesn’t mean you don’t need aug comm software.  In fact the term “aug comm” is short for “augmentative and alternative communication,” and the “augmentative” part means that it’s used in addition to speech, not just in replacement of totally absent speech (which is what the “alternative” part would be).

In my book, like… it’s even a totally valid use of aug comm if you just feel more like yourself when you’re communicating that way, in a way that’s pretty vague and undefined.  That’s a very common thing for autistic people, even autistic people with very good verbal skills – to feel like they are more expressive through typing, or more personally and emotionally expressive.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying yes, use it however and whenever and whyever you want to.  And if anyone gives you flak, they’re the problem, not you, period.  I get extremely angry at people, including some disabled people, who try to turn assistive technology into some sort of exclusive club only for those who “need it enough” (which is always defined by their assumptions, not by what the person actually needs).  And I have extra rage towards people who do that with communication technology, because communication technology is one thing that almost every autistic person I’ve ever met could use at one time or another (pretty much the only exceptions being people who are literally not capable of using the technology, but are capable of speech), but most are afraid to because of the reactions they’d get.  Or haven’t even though it’s possible because they think of AAC as only for people who can’t speak at all, or who have more severe speech problems than they see themselves as having.