Bridging the social and technical divide in AAC for autistic adults
A 2024 paper from the HCI literature looks at what autistic adult AAC users actually need from their devices — and from the people around them.
The paper, presented at a major human-computer interaction venue, draws on interviews and design work with autistic adults who use AAC. Its central finding is that the field has been over-indexing on technical features and under-investing in the social side of communication.
What the users said
- Speed metrics underestimate the cognitive and motor effort behind each utterance.
- Partners who interrupt, finish sentences, or visibly grow impatient effectively end the conversation, regardless of how good the device is.
- Environments designed for fast verbal exchange (clinics, classrooms, retail) are hostile to AAC even when the technology works.
- Customization, identity, and voice all matter — generic systems feel impersonal in ways that affect whether the person uses them.
Where it points
The authors argue for a research program that takes the social half of communication seriously: partner training, environmental redesign, and policy that protects time and patience as accommodations in their own right.
Everything in that program applies, with very little translation, to nonspeaking autistic people using letterboards and supported typing. The technology is one part of the system. The other part is whether the people around the user are willing to wait.