What is "independent typing"?

A commenter on the FacilitationCommunication.org blog just asked us to address the question of individuals who start out with some form of facilitated communication but then "graduate" to "independent typing."

This is a common question, so I think my answer is worth repeating here:

The issue boils down to what "independence" means. Many people assume that typing on a stationary surface must be independent typing. However, if independence means free from facilitator influence, that is not enough. The facilitator must not be sitting or standing near the person within auditory or visual cueing range. The facilitated person must not be typing out a message that he may have rehearsed ahead of time with a facilitator. 

In the carefully edited videos we see in the movie Spellers of what indeed looks like "independent" typing, we can't be sure whether these conditions hold. These scenes do not guarantee that the person can type spontaneous responses to novel questions when their facilitator is out of the room. In fact, the only way to be sure that facilitation isn't controlled by the facilitator is to blind the facilitator as part of what's called a "message-passing" test. But that is something that proponents of RPM and S2C have uniformly refused to do, even when the stakes are extremely high (abuse allegations; multi-million dollar lawsuits against school districts). 

There have, however, been a few facilitator-blinded tests that have arisen in naturalistic settings, and, as we discuss in this post, the results indicate that even Tito, one of the most seemingly independent typers (see him here), is producing messages that are controlled by his facilitator.