Social stigma negatively impacts the well-being of neurodivergent individuals. Specifically for autistic people, the social isolation and pressure to conform to normative ways of being can take a tremendous toll; such as a thwarted sense of belonging to the point of higher rates of suicide. Yet, few technologies are directly targeting the problem of stigma. Socio-technical systems have tremendous potential to shift public perception of traditionally marginalized populations. However, these systems are not consistently designed to reflect the values and needs of neurodivergent individuals. This work explores the use of design sprints to envision CT– a spectrum of technology that could reduce social stigma by increasing the public’s awareness, accommodations, acceptance, advocacy, and appreciation. This work reports on two design sprints across 25 HCI community members with varying lived experiences with neurodiversity and knowledge of design practice. The resulting design concepts were discussed in the groups and then analyzed to reflect on how they might combat stigma. Results reveal designs that support the freedom to be oneself via (1) safe spaces (2) public understanding, and (3) authentic expression of strengths, challenges, and needs.

Digital games are a multi-billion-dollar industry whose production and consumption extend globally. Representation in games is an increasingly important topic. As those who create and consume the medium grow ever more diverse, it is essential that player or user-experience research, usability, and any consideration of how people interface with their technology is exercised through inclusive and intersectional lenses. Previous research has identified how character configuration interfaces preface white-male defaults [39, 40, 67]. This study relies on 1-on-1 play-interviews where diverse participants attempt to create “themselves” in a series of games and on group design activities to explore how participants may envision more inclusive character configuration interface design. Our interview findings describe specific points of tension in the process of creating characters in existing interfaces and the sketches participant-collaborators produced challenge the homogeneity of current interface designs. This project amplifies the perspective of diverse participant-collaborators to provide constructive implications and a series of principles for designing more inclusive character configuration interfaces, which support more diverse stories and gameworlds by reconfiguring the constraints that shape those stories and gameworlds.

Social stigma is a complex phenomenon that plagues humanity. Disability is a key target of stigma, with physical, cognitive, emotional conditions being highly scrutinized by society. Many technologies aimed to support disabled people attempt to do so by directly changing their individual interactions with the world. When attention is drawn to affirm disability identities, it risks being perceived as inspiration porn. However, there is another way to level the playing field, to be inclusive rather than objectifying; that aim to empower stigmatized individuals rather than provide a single example of inspiration for the nondisabled observer that does little to reduce the negative stereotype. This paper introduces the concept of Celebratory Technologies for Neurodiversity. Drawing on a framework of social change specific to the stigma of autism; the tenets of the Neurodiversity movement; and the results of a current design probe with an adult with autism, initial suggestions for creating Celebratory Technologies for Neurodiversity support are provided.

Research in HCI applied to clinical interventions relies on normative assumptions about which bodies and minds are healthy, valuable, and desirable. To disrupt this normalizing drive in HCI, we define a “counterventional approach” to intervention technology design informed by critical scholarship and community perspectives. This approach is meant to unsettle normative assumptions of intervention as urgent, necessary, and curative. We begin with a historical overview of intervention in HCI and its critics. Then, through reparative readings of past HCI projects in autism intervention, we illustrate the emergent principles of a counterventional approach and how it may manifest research outcomes that are fundamentally divergent from dominant approaches. We then explicate characteristics of “counterventions” – projects that aim to contest dominant sociotechnical paradigms through privileging community and participants in research inquiry, interaction design, and analysis of outcomes. These divergent research imaginaries have transformative implications for how interventionist HCI might be conducted in future.

Some neurodivergent people prioritize visual details over the “big picture”. While excellent attention to detail has many advantages, some contexts require the rapid integration of global and local information. A local processing style can be so strong that local details interfere with the fluid integration of global information required for processing of information rapidly displayed on user interfaces. This disconnect between context of an interaction and processing style can be termed local interference. Personalization of visual stimuli can promote a more accessible computing experience. We describe how technological interventions can support shifting of visual attention from local to global features to make them more accessible. We present two empirical studies. One study with one autistic adult revealed a significant shift in eye gaze fixation, and the other study with 20 autistic children revealed filters that visually emphasize primary aspects encouraged more global comments about the image content.

In this work in progress, I explore five interaction designs for the highly variable sensory needs of three neurodiverse children. I aim to create a repertoire of interactions that can be employed in future systems aimed at inclusive play. The three children in this work have educational labels of neurotypical, ADHD, and autism, but rather than design for their general labels or IQ scores, I designed for their individual sensory profiles. Based on clinical tools for sensory integration, I take the next step in a long-term project---this is the second stage where I explore three users' experience with five high fidelity VR prototypes across 26 user sessions. I aim to understand how virtual environments and user interactions can support sensory needs---and thus how to make future collaborative VR systems "sensory-accessible". I contribute empirical findings for accommodating sensory differences for neurodiverse children regarding interaction design for children by tying clinically-supported design features to sensory-inclusive techniques.

Children with autism often have sensory processing differences that can lead to a myriad of challenges, including difficulty with awareness of how their bodies occupy physical space. Natural User Interfaces (NUI) can help augment therapies to support these children. We developed DanceCraft, a whole-body interface to augment dance therapy for children with autism. In a pilot study, we deployed DanceCraft to nine homes for one week for children with autism to use. We received feedback on both the system's central activity (dance), as well as elements of its design and set up, offering lessons to guide future field deployments of such systems.

SIGACCESS and SIGCHI are being shaped by new members as they integrate feminist theory, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and critical disability studies into the field. What happens when we begin to hold each other accountable to the impact our work has on marginalized users and communities? How do we develop a community of collaborative personal growth and institutional transformation? In this experience report, the authors retell the tangled events that brought them together. Through the passionate witnessing of critical analysis and critique, what might have been a contentious adversarial relationship became a potent partnership devoted to pushing the field toward a transformative future. From our story, we present reflections for the "Prefigurative Politics" of socially conscious computing.

To improve functional communication and behavioral management, many children with disabilities receive behavioral and communication-related intervention from professionals such as behavioral analysts and speech and language therapists. This paper presents user perspectives from three clinicians who have used and/or designed assistive technology with children with disabilities, and calls for researchers to recognize and leverage clinicians' knowledge to design accessible technology for children with complex sensory and communication needs.

Social communication frequently includes nuanced nonverbal communication cues, including eye contact, gestures, facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. This type of communication is central to face-to-face interaction, but can be challenging for children and adults with autism. Innovative technologies can provide support by augmenting human-delivered cuing and automated prompting. Specifically, immersive virtual reality (VR) offers an option to generalize social skill interventions by concretizing nonverbal information in real-time social interactions. In this work, we explore the design and evaluation of three nonverbal communication applications in immersive VR. The results of this work indicate that delivering real-time visualizations of proximity, speaker volume, and duration of one's speech is feasible in immersive VR and effective for real-time support for proximity regulation for children with autism. We conclude with design considerations for therapeutic VR systems.

Maker culture values fabrication and production in both the digital and physical realms as well as the sharing of resources. As such, maker culture provides an opportunity to be democratic and inclusive. Likewise, spaces that stem from maker culture, such as makerspaces, provide the same opportunity for inclusion, even for those with disabilities. Autcraft is a community that supports children with autism and is centered on a Minecraft virtual world that embodies maker culture. The Autcraft community's unique form of maker culture supports self-expression, sociality, and learning for children with autism by providing structure in a virtual space, allowing for and enabling creating and sharing. In this paper, we explore design implications for the creation of inclusive spaces for making and self-expression in the future based on intensive fieldwork in the Autcraft community.

Overselectivity is a learning challenge that is largely unaddressed in the assistive technology community. Screening and intervention, done by specialists, is time-intensive and requires substantial training. Little to no treatments are available to the broader population of preliterate, minimally verbal individuals. In this work, we examine the impact of an iPad game based on the tenets of behavioral therapy to mitigate overselectivity. We developed software-based techniques and evaluated the system using established methods from the field of Special Education. We present the results of a deployment in a special education school that demonstrates that an assistive tablet game is a feasible means of addressing overselectivity, and we present generalizable technological features drawn from evidenced-based therapies to consider in future assistive technologies. We suggest that designers of assistive technology systems, particularly those who address physical, cognitive, and behavioral difficulties for preliterate AAC users, should consider overselectivity as a potential co-occurring condition.

People with autism are at risk for social isolation due to differences in their perception and engagement with the social world. In this work, we aim to address one specific concern related to socialization the understanding, awareness, and use of interpersonal space. Over the course of a year, we iteratively designed and tested a series of concepts for supporting children with autism in perceiving, understanding, and responding to physical proximity with other people. During this process, we developed ProCom, a prototype system for measuring proximity without requiring instrumentation of the environment or another person. We used a variety of low and high fidelity prototypes, culminating in ProCom, to assess the feasibility, utility, and challenges of this approach. The results of these iterative design engagements indicate that wearable assistive technologies can support people in developing awareness of physical proximity in social settings. However, challenges related to both personal and collective use remain

Deploying novel technologies requires the coordinated efforts of the research team, research participants, and a variety of community members and project stakeholders. To ensure that the project is completed successfully, these disparate groups of people engage in articulation work, which is the meta-work that supports the use of collaborative systems. In this paper, we examine the articulation work surrounding the deployment of systems that have found limited long-term adoption: assistive technology. Specifically, we examine three research deployments of a collaborative game for children with autism. Analysis of the articulation work performed during these studies demonstrates how research deployments of technologies create conditions in which stakeholders must take on additional roles to make the deployment work. By understanding the articulation work surrounding deployment studies engendered in this role fluidity, we can improve both research design and the analysis of data emergent from these studies.

Those with disabilities have long adopted, adapted, and appropriated collaborative systems to serve as assistive devices. In this paper, we present the results of a digital ethnography in a Minecraft virtual world for children with autism, specifically examining how this community has used do-it-yourself (DIY) making activities to transform the game into a variety of assistive technologies. Our results demonstrate how players and administrators "mod" the Minecraft system to support self-regulation and community engagement. This work highlights the ways in which we, as researchers concerned with accessible and equitable computing spaces, might reevaluate the scope of our inquiry, and how designers might encourage and support appropriation, enhancing users' experience and long-term adoption.

During face-to-face conversations, adults with autism frequently use atypical rhythms and sounds in their speech (prosody), which can result in misunderstandings and miscommunication. SayWAT is a Wearable Assistive Technology that provides feedback to wearers about their prosody during face-to-face conversations. In this paper, we describe the design process that led to five design guidelines that governed the development of SayWAT and present results from two studies involving our prototype solution. Our results indicate that wearable assistive technologies can automatically detect atypical prosody and deliver feedback in real time without disrupting the wearer or the conversation partner. Additionally, we provide suggestions for wearable assistive technologies for social support.

MOSOCO is a mobile assistive application that uses augmented reality and the visual supports of a validated curriculum, the Social Compass, to help children with autism practice social skills in real-life situations. In this paper, we present the results of a seven-week deployment study of MOSOCO in a public school in Southern California with both students with autism and neurotypical students. The results of our study demonstrate that MOSOCO facilitates practicing and learning social skills, increases both quantity and quality of social interactions, reduces social and behavioral missteps, and enables the integration of children with autism in social groups of neurotypical children. The findings from this study reveal emergent practices of the uses of mobile assistive technologies in real-life situations.

Children with autism often experience substantial challenges in understanding, structuring, and predicting the activities in their daily lives. The use of symbols to represent a series of activities, also known as visual schedules, have been shown to be an effective intervention technique for helping individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In this paper, we describe the design and technical architecture for vSked, an interactive visual scheduling tool that allows group interactivity with content generated through end-user programming. We also outline a scenario that demonstrates how vSked extends the benefits of traditional visual schedules through both interactivity and automatic logging of use. This scenario also indicates the type of experience a user might have during a demonstration session.

Visual schedules--the use of symbols to represent a series of activities or steps--have been successfully used by caregivers to help children with autism to understand, structure, and predict activities in their daily lives. Building from in-depth fieldwork and participatory design sessions, we developed vSked, an interactive and collaborative visual scheduling system designed for elementary school classrooms. We evaluated vSked in situ in one autism-specific classroom over three weeks. In this paper, we present the design principles, technical solution, and results from this successful deployment. Use of vSked resulted in reductions in staff effort required to use visual supports. vSked also resulted in improvements in the perceived quality and quantity of communication and social interactions in the classroom.