A number of people in the autism-FC universe describe themselves, at least to some extent, as non-speaking. This may sound totally unsurprising: after all, most of those subjected to FC are mostly non-speaking. But the non-speakers I have in mind here are not themselves facilitated.
On one hand, this means that the testimonials attributed to these people about being non-speaking are their own authentic words—as opposed to words that are authored by facilitators. On the other hand, there’s a complication: most of these self-identified non-speakers also identify as autistic. As a result, they seemingly contradict the general findings that minimal speaking in autism means minimally verbal in general: minimally able, that is, to communicate in any linguistic medium, including in written language and sign language.
The existence of such people, therefore, lends legitimacy to the notion that FC potentially unlocks hidden linguistic skills in other autistic non-speakers.
So let’s take a closer look at who some of these people are. They include:
A prominent autism advocate, consistently characterized as a non-speaker, including in a recent interview by People Magazine and in a recent webinar hosted by the National Institutes of Deafness and Communication Disorders, who communicates at all her public events exclusively by typing on an iPad. This person serves on the board of the pro-FC organization CommunicationFirst.
Another prominent autism advocate, a former member of the Autism Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) who has been characterized as “non-speaking.” This person has appeared as a guest contributor on the pro-FC website CommunicationFirst.
The owner of an autism-themed Instagram account with 38 thousand followers, who is described in this 2022 collection of mother’s day messages from autistic individuals as a “41 year old non-speaking AAC user” and heard in this interview communicating through a speech-generating AAC device. This person is also a practitioner and promoter of a form of FC known as Rapid Prompting Method.
Unlike autistic non-speakers who are subjected to FC, none of these people, however autistic they may be, is a “non-speaker” as most people understand the term: i.e., someone who never speaks and/or is unable to speak. That is, each of them has the ability to converse through speech and/or to speak fluently:
The iPad user tells us here, through a recorded message on her device, “I can talk. I can even have a conversation with you.” But she says that she finds speaking “very difficult when I am upset or overstimulated.”
The former ASAN board member turns out to have been a non-speaker only during a 17-year-long stretch of his adult life: specifically from 2001 to 2018, at the conclusion of which he is said to have regained most of his speech and to rely only partially on AAC. Numerous recent videos, for example this one, show him speaking spontaneous, fluent English.
The autism Instagrammer is heard speaking fluent, spontaneous English during this debate in defense of the Rapid Prompting Method.
With this expanded definition of “non-speaker”—one that includes people who mostly can speak but, for whatever reason, sometimes are unable to or sometimes prefer not to—we can add two more FC-promoting individuals to our list:
The owner of a YouTube channel about autism with 68.7 thousand followers who identifies as autistic and speaks fluent English. On this episode (starting at around 4:00) she speaks in defense of FC-use and the Rapid Prompting Method and on this episode (at around 6:30) about how she sometimes “go[es] non-verbal” in more spontaneous social situations.
The Executive Director and Legal Director of the pro-FC website CommunicationFirst, who we can hear here speaking fluent English, whose CommunicationFirst bio says she is “neurodivergent and multiply disabled, and expresses herself most effectively by typing, though is usually able to communicate using speech.”
Is it a coincidence that all these self-proclaimed non-speakers support FC? I think not.
First, as noted above, the existence of autistic/neurodivergent non-speakers who are linguistically conversational and literate opens up the possibility that FCed non-speakers likewise have the capacity for conversational, literate language. Precisely this possibility, indeed, was repeatedly asserted by two of the autism experts at the National Institutes of Deafness and Communication Disorders webinar, where the speech-capable iPad user was (literally) juxtaposed with a non-speaking FC user.
A screenshot from the NIDCD Webinar, with the IPad typer and the FC user juxtaposed.
Second, some of their testimonials make some FC-friendly claims about written language. One is that written language can, by itself, be a route to spoken language and to language comprehension, as we hear in this interview of the autism Instagrammer (on a podcast that has also featured FC-user Ido Kedar). She recounts how it was through the channel of written language that she moved beyond what she characterizes as speech that was 100% echolalic (i.e., meaningless echoes of other people’s speech) into meaningful, communicative language. This lends support to the claim made by many FC proponents that FCed individuals are able to acquire language exclusively through print. (A recent post of ours explains why this isn’t actually possible).
Another FC-friendly claim about writing comes from the iPad user: namely, that typing can be less linguistically demanding than speech. In one of her talks, she includes among reasons why speech is difficult for her that “first I have to think of the word and figure out if I even know what that word means” and “lastly, I’ve got to talk and make sentences.” But the challenges of finding words and making sentences apply equally to typing. She also suggests that the whole process, including figuring out how to pronounce words and how to modulate her voice while pronouncing them takes too long because “my brain moves much faster than my mouth”. But typing is generally a much slower process than speech, even in the case of people who have difficulty pronouncing words, and even if the case of non FCed individuals who type with more than just a single index finger.
But perhaps the two things associated with these non-facilitated “non speakers” that most conflate their authentic communications with FC, and thereby most legitimize FC, are these:
When the iPad user suggests (at around 3:15 in this video) that people may be skeptical about whether she actually wrote her speeches.
When the iPad user is described here as someone who “types to communicate.”
As far as skepticism about authorship goes, the reasons for skepticism about the authorship of FCed messages are far more numerous than the reasons for skepticism about who wrote the speeches of someone who “can have a conversation with you” and can clearly type independently.
And as far as “type to communicate” goes, it, like “non-speaking,” is ambiguous in ways that are convenient for FC. A quick Google search will reveal that “typing to communicate” is now used as one of the standard FC euphemisms. Here is a quote from the FC center at Syracuse University (which, in a second FC euphemism, is now called the Center on Disability and Inclusion):
Typing to communicate (Also known as Facilitated Communication or Supported Typing) is a form of alternative and augmentative communication in which people with disabilities and communication impairments express themselves by pointing (e.g. at pictures, letters, or objects) and, more commonly, by typing.
Sounds so innocuous and unconcerning—right up there with being a non-speaker by preference, as opposed to being a non-speaker because of the actual barriers to language acquisition that characterize much of the autism spectrum.
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