For anyone who's been told to "just pick up the phone": many autistic adults prefer email for contact with people they don't know, and research backs that up. Written options are an access need, not a quirk.
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Whilst I'm neurodiverse and don't mind using the telephone (I'm a VOIP engineer and build whole PBXs, and connect vintage phones to them), there are plenty of situations I'd rather have email as its a formal written record of what was agreed without having to use audio recording techniques (which often only the big company has access to).
I suspect this is exactly why a lot of organisations push people towards using phone calls (they can more easily deny such things as agreed actions or timescales),
Should have included the source: Howard & Sedgewick (2021), “Anything but the phone!”, in the journal Autism. They surveyed 245 autistic adults. For contacting people or organisations they didn’t know, email came out on top and phone calls were very unpopular.
https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211014995
Thank you for all the replies. I’m reading every one. — Yaser
‘Anything but the phone!’: Communication mode preferences in the autism community
@digitalcortex@mastodon.social hot autistic take : the ideal accessibility for differing types autistic adults is to have all 3 of : in-place face-to-face, email, phone... and to have none of the 3 be comparatively second-class
(i've needed each at different times depending on phases of mental health and chronic pain and i'm not the only autistic person i know for which this is the case tbh)
Also:
- the hearing-impaired
- people with a speech impediment
- non-native speakers still learning the language
- people who want to keep a written record of certain communications
- literally anyone who prefers to take time when communicating for any reason whatsoever
@digitalcortex Frankly, I think most people do, so there's a curb cut effect to accommodating people on the spectrum.