Sleep tip for the neurodivergent: While I agree that putting my phone away for an hour before bed is not ever gonna happen, I do intentionally have a slowdown period. Like how you can’t go from sprinting on a treadmill to a sudden standstill, your brain does need to calm down before bed.

For me, this means no loud noises or “fast” activities in the hour before sleep. I crawl into bed with my pets and read fanfic/ebooks or troll through Tumblr before listening to some lady on YT gently tell me to relax when actively trying to fall asleep.

No fast or loud activities means no TikTok/YouTube shorts/videos that require energy from me, especially in quick bursts. No TV shows or movies either. I also avoid strenuous activity and don’t do any house chores that aren’t part of my bedtime routine. My little autistic brain loves being primed for things so once my bedtime routine goes into motion and I crawl into bed, as long as I don’t get too sucked into what I’m doing, sleep is easy.

I recently talked to someone with ADHD and she has been sleeping like a mess and never goes to bed at normal hours. Part of it was that she hasn’t been giving her brain any ability to slow down to sleep. Please be gentle to your brain.

I do that too! It works way better then just no phone at all :)

Allistic researchers really went out of their way to find out that autistic people are less likely to lie or be immoral for personal gain and said that’s somehow BAD and a sign of pathology from AUTISTIC people? You can’t make this shit up.

Twitter thread by user @felixmooreactor (Felix Moore)

God, allistics are genuinely fucking evil and selfish and do everything for show rather than for anything genuine or of substance. I’m so glad I was born normal and I hope we can find a cure for allism soon, for the sake of a better world.

“Here, we show that ASD individuals are more inflexible when following a moral rule even though an immoral action can benefit themselves, and suffer an undue concern about their ill-gotten gains and the moral cost.“

“Suffer undue concern over ill gotten gains and the moral cost”??????

??????

So now having autism is bad because it means you have a conscience??? That you feel bad when you do bad things??? That you feel regret when you gain something through bad means???? Empathy is bad now because autistic folk experience it?

What. The. Entire. Fuck.

I cannot comprehend why… how… what fucking purpose-

*lays down*

OH! MUST BE THAT EMPATHY SHIT PEOPLE SAY ISN’T PRESENT IN AUTISTICS?!

Absolutely disgusting. Allistics get the fuck out of autism research AND science reporting FOREVER 2021 challenge.

Though I must admit that contemporary society makes *WAY* more sense when you realize that the majority of the human race apparently sees moral “rules” as being completely dispensible without a second thought when they’re inconvenient to your personal gain.

Yeah it’s weird how much more sense allistic people make when you shove that in

So breaking news, autistic people’s morals are incompatible with the capitalistic necessity of back stabbing.

Truly, what the everloving fuck? I tracked down the original journal article, and found that the above is absolutely accurate to what it says: people with a diagnosis of autism are more prone to do the right thing whether or not anyone is watching, and the authors somehow frame that as pathological. 

This is where I want to start a fight about who gets to define “normal.”  What is wrong with these people’s brains that they think hypocrisy is OK?  I posit that the researchers are the ones with something weird with THEIR right temporoparietal junctions.

This is why things need to be reviewed for personal bias, especially when it comes to psychology.

I feel like the only reason they pathologise this is because if they don’t then the OPPOSITE is true — and they’d have to confront the fact that allistic people’s moral flexibility might actually be some kind of psycho-social flaw. the cognitive dissonance of all this I stg

BINGO.

Also, with 80 percent shared comorbidities, ADHD can fall into this too. This is why I consider ADHD to be autism’s excitable twin and exempt from allistic bullshit. In fact, I’m really good friends with the advocates who coined Neurodivergence and Cousin Neurologies.

Anyway AAAAAAA

also I haven’t forgotten about needing a nap, this is just one more reason.

“Neurotypical” people are fucking broken, I swear. They make no sense to me.

The fact that they’re framing it as “moral inflexibility” I strongly suspect is also misleading. That term is evocative of something like Kantian ethics. The idea that any given action is either intrinsically always moral or intrinsically always immoral. Such as asserting that lying is always immoral regardless of your reason or the outcome of telling the truth. Kant would say lying to Nazis to protect persecuted groups is immoral and no amount of positive outcome ever justifies anything that is “wrong.” I don’t like Kantian moral philosophy.

But I think what they are actually seeing in autistic people is not Kantian moral inflexibility and lack of nuance, but instead is a fundamental desire to always do what’s right and good in any given situation, without a focus on personal gain.

The language in the article is falsely implying that autistic people lack a nuanced understanding of morality. Which is just plain ableist. The allistic ability to equivocate and justify bad acts to themselves and maintain cognitive dissonance is a bug, not a feature.

*screams into the void*

"neurodivergent people are bad at picking up social cues" statistically untrue every day i pick up on millions of social cues that literally do not exist

If your shot hit the tree, then it still missed the deer, my dude.

im not hunting deer im spraying shrapnel into a crowded room and youre in it. are you mad at me

rsd is not a condition. rsd is not a diagnosis. rsd is not a medically recognized symptom of adhd and the experience “rsd” describes is not exclusive to adhd at all. this does not mean people with adhd can’t experience rejection sensitivity, but “rsd” as an “adhd” thing is a concept with no emprical backing developed by one man, with claims of it being brain-based without any evidence behind that claim, as well as many other claims surrounding the “nature” of rsd. adhd is a condition characterized by executive dysfunction, which can involve emotional dysregulation, but acknowledging that is different from the framework of “rsd” and seeing people on this site pass this around without critical thought and even claiming rsd is “adhd only >:(” makes me sick. you’re buying into what’s basically pop psychology instead of scientific research.

emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity is by no means adhd exclusive, and people with adhd experiencing those things doesn’t need to have its own special label or whatever when there’s no meaningful difference between someone with adhd experiencing those things and someone without adhd experiencing those things. that’s not logical and a ridiculous mentality of “rsd is adhd ONLY because our rejection sensitivity is SPECIAL” completely goes against building common ground with other neurodivergent people for petty and invalid reasons.

the amount of misinfo going around about adhd on this site is uncanny. please investigate claims others make about disability and do your research - actual research, which doesn’t include tumblr posts that lack citation and oft unreliable sources like ADDitude Mag and WebMD. it would be INFINITELY more productive to operate on a shared experience of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity among varying groups of neurodivergent people than to feed into this nonsensical idea of “adhd-only special super rejection sensitivity.”

if you allow me to second this op, i became aware of the whole rsd thing being bullshit during my research for my current graduation work. i looked through many articles, hundreds even, in english, portuguese, spanish… granted, i did not exhaust EVERY possible science research website, but i favored ones that had good rep and that i already knew could help me get easy resources. still, no mention of rejection sensitive dysphoria, for my research that contained adhd as a keyword.

i feel like the case that happens here is that people see adhd and rsd through the lens of false correlation, and by that i mean, they observe a phenomenon that DOES happen, which is people with adhd feeling alienated from their peers and having a negative sense of self when it comes to social situations, and immediately think: “oh! this happens a lot with people who have adhd? must be a symptom!” when rather, it is related, yes, but it is more of a risk.

and this risk is not related to the very existence of adhd, but rather to outside circumstance, specifically ableism and underdiagnosis. during my research, some articles would cite going undiagnosed until adulthood as a higher risk for comorbid anxiety and depression. also, negative labels and rejection from family and peers contributed to low self esteem, negative self perception and oh shocker!/s social anxiety (sources, if you want them, sorry some of them are in portuguese: 1, 2, 3, 4).

its not that adhd CAUSES any of this. its just that its a high risk because of ableist environments and often a lack of diagnosis, which leads to you feeling pretty fucking bad about yourself and wondering why are you so different. i mean, i know i did. but i think thats something that can happen with ANY disorder, specially disorders that can persist through your whole life and affect pretty much every corner of your life. i may even be confident enough to say that, if i had done a research on autism, i may have found pretty similar results. ableism and rejection is something common to the experiences of pretty much all of us neurodivergent people!! there is literally no need to confuse a common experience with something that only this disorder or that disorder can have.

don’t apologize, this is good!

So the thing is…. yes, this is all true, but also framing this thing as something that is Really Real can help you access treatment to help you stop experiencing this, or at least stop experiencing it so painfully. The experience we call reaction-sensitive dysphoria is just a trauma reaction to stimuli a person has learned are likely to cause emotional pain, and if you have ADHD or another undiagnosed neurodiverse position, you are especially likely to develop these kinds of traumatic responses as a result of being expected to do things you cannot do and then being blamed as a result.  That’s the ableism that is being discussed here. (Note that late diagnosis isn’t actually the only reason for this–lots of people are diagnosed early, as I was, but also raised by parents who feel very strongly that accommodating the disability in any way or even admitting it are deeply shameful things that, I don’t know, somehow let the disability Win and are to be completely avoided. This, too, can cause this effect.)

One thing that is important to note about stress, trauma, and PTSD generally is that a stressful event is much more likely to become a lasting traumatic event as a consequence of whether you feel judged to be responsible for the stressful event by people you trust. This is a big reason why rape is much more likely to cause lasting trauma than, say, muggings: we live in a culture that is much more likely to treat a rape victim as somehow responsible for someone else choosing to hurt them than someone who has had goods stolen. If you are told “it’s not your fault” and receive care from people in your social circle, the odds of developing a lasting trauma dramatically fall.

It is also worth noting that repeated traumas from early childhood create a PTSD syndrome that is dramatically different from simple PTSD and is now being called “complex PTSD.” Traumas that stem from something like ADHD fit this mold, not the simple PTSD mode, and are more likely to be minimized and not viewed as being actually traumatic because they’re just part of your baseline existence, something you are responsible for, but are just inexplicably horrible about handling and dealing with. Complex PTSD is also, mysteriously enough, capable of creating the same set of symptoms previously diagnosed as “borderline personality disorder” but unlike BPD it is treatable, just not with cognitive behavioral therapy. The problem isn’t the way you think about yourself; the problem is the way you have been treated and the limbic system reactions you have learned to have to common experiences in your life.

I agree with y’all: I don’t think RSD is inherent to ADHD; I think it’s just a trauma response from being repeatedly treated as if the things you struggle with are just laziness, or idiocy, or impulsiveness. It’s a common kind of systemic and complex trauma that often appears in people whose neurotypes break executive function. I see it in non-ADHD autistics, too.

But.

I also noticed what you all are saying about the rationale for framing RSD as an ADHD thing when I was bringing articles for my psychiatrist because I wanted to try clonidine in order to manage this mental health symptom. I mean, I fully believe Dodson is onto something–this particular med really can work for this particular problem, and this really does seem to be a common symptom in ADHD populations, even if I think he is badly overgeneralizing–and I was able to use his work to use my ADHD diagnosis to convince my psychiatrist to let me give it a try. And it’s been really, really worth it! I would not have had the ability to convince my psychiatrist to trust me if I hadn’t been able to shorthand–”well–I want to try this because RSD is clearly something I am struggling with–yes this is indicated for me, cf the ADHD diagnosis and autism from ages 7 and 12 respectively–well no I didn’t tell you three years ago when I started seeing you–no it didn’t seem relevant!–well that’s because I was explicitly trained to be very wary about who I disclosed this information to up to and including professionals and because I’ve been unconsciously trained by experience to be careful about same because experiencing ableism has a cost–well okay, let’s try it!”

Having Dodson’s work to point to let me give this supportive (cheap, non-controlled, very accessible) medication to help me treat this system, instead of letting it continue to cripple me while I tried to struggle through an objectively pretty traumatic set of circumstances.

Ironically, I had the thought to try this while reading a book about surviving trauma, because the author in that book (Bruce Perry) had thought of it as a supportive treatment for helping children process and heal from traumatic situations because clonidine and other alpha agonists dampen adrenaline responses, allowing you to deal with situations that won’t hurt you but are triggering you without also trying to fight through a BIG EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO THREAT. Right now, this work on systemic trauma (which does have significant backing in the literature, and I will go hunt for it if anyone wants to hear more on a specific topic; I’m just firing off a quick ramble here) just flat out has not trickled down to medical providers. So as far as I am concerned, sharing the information about the experience, naming it, and pointing out that there are ways to treat this specific symptom is wildly important. It’s just also important not to pretend this is only or even mostly a thing that is specific to ADHD, even though the person who is most accessible to medical practicioners keeps insisting it is without really understanding why it’s happening.

So, like. Go forth. Use Dodson to convince your mental health providers to provide you with access to relevant supportive care as it is relevant to you to do so, and do so with my blessing, at least. But don’t also lash out at other people who are going “wait, fuck, complex trauma–that is… that is a thing?!?” or worse, other people going “complex trauma about being asked to do certain things I cannot do but no one believes me is a thing?” We are all trying to navigate a wildly unfair world. Let’s make sure that we stand in solidarity together as much as we can.

Theory that neurotypicals are the ones with "communication issues" actually. You're the one who can't communicate with ME, buckaroo

Neurotypicals will play four dimensional chess about asking you to wash the dishes and I don't believe this is my problem

neurodivergents will be like "please use plain and simple language with me" and neurotypicals will start sobbing and be like "bbut... my mind games... my passive aggressive social hoop,,s that i exppect you to jump th,rough...."

I saw a theory once that the people who get most agitated by ND people in socal intereactions are the NT* people with the worse-than-average social skills. They’re used to their more socally adept peers compensating for them and carrying the conversation for them and when they meet an ND person who doesn’t do that for them they get real agitated because they genuinely struggle to communicate without someone pulling their weight.

*the asterisk is there because, well, if you’re having that much difficulty communicating without a Communication Buddy, you might have an udiagnosed mental disorder.

And I believe this theory because it explains a lot of what I’ve seen in my personal expirience with Autistic-ADHD friendships where the ADHD-Dolphin-Brain Friend sort of autofills in the gaps or files the extra information provided that the less-verbally-articulate Autistic Friend leaves out or over-elaborates while talking.  It also goes the other way where the Autistic Friend is like “Yes Please Infodump All This Context At Me” while the ADHD friend goes on a Wild Ramble or bluntly asks “What?” When ADHD Friend forgets to include a point of reference which is helpful, honestly.

I also believe it because the people who gave me the most grief about how I talk were the people least able to articulate what was bothering them about how I talk.

it’s a common misconception that neurodivergent people don’t understand jokes. the reality is that neurotypical people are just not very funny. 

#there’s also a social aspect to laughing at unfunny jokes #neurotypical kids will pick up that people like it if you laugh at their jokes #and they learn to detect a joking tone #then laugh at it even if they don’t understand or like the joke (via aphony-cree)

.

.

This.

This is why people who stay in my life are neurodiverse like me!

[ID: Thread by I make psychedelic klezmerfunk @/Khoshtistic , "i've mentioned this before but one of the hardest things about adhd is how it can wreck your relationships because you don't have friendship degradation mechanics like everyone else"

"like my friendship degradation mechanics are just straight up broken , i can go YEARS without hearing from someone at all and still feeling exactly the same level of familiarity about them . but they don't because friendship degrades if you don't take care of it"

"It's just kinda like . sad because no matter how hard i try to keep up with friendships i'll inevitably have a dry spell of a few months and by that point the other person has moved on , because , why wouldn't they ? it's the one skill my adhd fucks on the hardest"

"anyways this is why i like being friends with other adhd / autistic / neurodivergent people because we see each other and it's " AYYYY " every time [keysmash] friendship degradation mechanic broke for both of us." /End ID]

the concept of study breaks is so neurotypical lmao if i can somehow magically manage to focus on studying for 45 minutes i'm not gonna purposefully pull myself out of that zone by taking a five minute break and risk getting stuck on doing something else

yes! I’m either in studying mode or I’m not - and if I happen to be in studying mode, I need to be taking advantage of that while I can

One of the best explanations I’ve been able to come up with for why autism messes with your sleep schedule is that your brain prefers you to be awake when it is darker and more quieter out. A more nocturnal schedule has a lot of sensory benefits for autistic people:

Which would work fine if we were living in a world where capitalism hadn’t made alternate sleep schedules so untenable because of “profit.” In a different society this sort of quality could be valued (“no I don’t mind tending the herd at night, you find it hard to stay awake but I find it peaceful,” and so on). But not in this one. And that’s not a failing of biology, or neurology. That’s a failure of society. The fact that so many neurodivergent people struggle with keeping an 8 to 5 schedule is another symptom of intrusive capitalism microcontrolling our lives, not a personal “weakness” or shortcoming.

Give people more control over their lives and schedules.

Oh, and this is not intended to dismiss people who have sleep issues. I have sleep issues; sometimes neurochemistry goes huurng! and prevents you from getting decent rest, or from being functional, or from maintaining a schedule, no matter how flexible your external situation is.

Autism & neurodivergence isn’t simple, and we all still struggle with things even with proper accommodations–the point is we struggle less, and can spend our time & energy dealing with the issues that can’t be avoided by environmental fixes. Even with a flexible schedule, many of us would still struggle with sleep disorders–but fewer of us. And the ones who did would have room to focus on their actual wellbeing, instead of their ability to conform to a rigorous artificial standard

Sometimes I get real annoyed at the way adults treat delayed speech, like YES it takes some of us longer to download a fucking language, that doesn’t make us subhuman you dumb brenda

Oh I have a trick for this I just try to predict every possible way a conversation might go and have prepared answers for every path it may take in order of probability, and I also have generic non-comitting responses to gain time when needed. Also I use humour to stir conversations towards a path I can more easily predict. Sometimes I mix them all by having stock jokes and pre studied joke formulas so I can quip faster than I consciously think though that one can get me in trouble sometimes. But socialisation is just a series of algorithms that can be easily predicted and prepared for as long as you put in the work and pay constant attention to patterns. People don’t even notice it’s all planned most of the time.

this comment sort of perfectly encapsulates the way verbal disabilities are still disabilities even when they’re invisible. like, yes, maybe you have over-trained yourself to the point that you can pass as neurotypical. (this is why autism is so difficult to diagnose in adults, who are more likely to have coping mechanisms that disguise their symptoms.) But passing doesn’t make you neurotypical or non-disabled. What the comment above is describing is a hard-earned, imperfect coping mechanism that makes it easier to hide a communication disability, but not easier to experience.

Let’s say that maybe, after hundreds of hours of self-training like the person above has put themselves through…let’s say that just maybe, you can speak and sound like you don’t have a verbal disability:

Stop telling people “Oh you aren’t really [x]. you seem normal.” 

Keep reading

Allistics (non-autistic people) please read!

I’ve seen plenty of posts about it being important for allistics to not infantilise autistic people, and I agree.

But you know what I haven’t seen addressed and really want to make clear?

Allistics are not allowed to judge which behaviours are infantilising when it comes to autistic people receiving support.

What neurotypicals might perceive as “infantilising” to them, might just be what allows an autistic person to function. I have had this happened to me a few times, but the most notable occasion was about a month ago.

I was not functioning well with living alone and had fallen behind on many important phone calls, was not eating regularly, and was overall in a very bad mental state.

For the first time, I actually opened up to my mother about how much I struggle with these things, and it was a very big moment for me. She was not the most accepting when I was first diagnosed with ASD, but she has come far since then (still some way to go though).

She was facetiming me one day and was helping me write a list of things I had to do and was laying things out in minute detail.

‘Have you eaten today?’ ‘No.’ ‘Okay, you need to go to the fridge, then get some food, make a sandwich and sit down to eat it.’ I wrote all of this down on my whiteboard. ‘Then you need to set an alarm on your phone for 1pm everyday-’ she waited for me to open the app ‘-then you need to label it “eat lunch”.’

And this was the most support I had ever received in my life for my autism and I was so happy, literally thrilled. Happy flapping galore. Suddenly things made more sense, I felt more hopeful that with this kind of support I would be able to function a bit better.

But my younger sister (who really is wonderful, I don’t want this one experience to make her out to be horrible, she really is amazing) was in the room with my mum and she said:

‘Ma, don’t baby him, it’s offensive.’

And I cannot tell you how heavy my heart felt in that moment.

Something which, for me, was exactly what I needed to feel functional and to feel like an adult for once, was seen as babying by someone else, someone very important to me.

And I shakily explained over the phone that actually this was exactly what I needed, thank you for having my back but I don’t find this offensive I find it helpful. She apologised and she sounded mortified by her mistake, I felt bad for her honestly.

But since then I haven’t been able to bring myself to ask my mum for this kind of help again because it was seen as infantilising.

I try not to let people’s opinions get to me but, as I’m sure most people can agree, that’s fucking difficult. Especially when you’ve constantly been judged, mocked, and discredited by neurotypicals your whole life.

So yeah, don’t infantilise autistic people. Don’t call them an uwu precious littol bean. Don’t shrug off their ideas and emotions as unimportant. Definitely don’t feel sympathy for us for being autistic.

But if you see an autistic person being helped by someone they are close to such as a friend, family member, or carer, don’t call it out as being “infantilising”. Because in a lot of cases it’s not. It’s helping. You have no authority in labelling our support.

Neurotypicals please reblog but don’t add anything

Other neurodivergent people can add to this!

This ADHD and Autism Venn Diagram was requested even more highly than the ADHD and PTSD diagram, and I finally got round to making it…

I think the obsession with having been “born this way” largely stems from the idea that you need to be “innocent” to be guiltless. 

If something is weird then you need to have no control over it, otherwise it would be mandatory to fix it. If I said that I had control over my stimming and could stop it at any time, people would request I do so. Not for my comfort but for theirs. If I said that I had control over my gender and could be something binary or maybe even cis, people would request I do so. If I said that I have control over my sexuality and could make myself heterosexual, people would request I do so. If I said I could control my attraction and could make myself monogamous, people would request I do so. If I said that I could control my disability and could choose to stop a flair up in its tracks, people would request I do so. They would never ask out of the goodness of their hearts, they would always be asking because I was annoying, concerning, distracting, or inconveniencing them. 

Diversity is sometimes only tolerated if you have no control. If you have control, rules will be made to stop it. Hair will be straightened, clothes will be standardized, languages will be shushed, interests will be squashed, weight will be lost, and so on and so on and so on. Proving that we were born this way replaces the more obvious, that we’re okay this way. I don’t need to be a helpless victim of my differences to be forgiven for them. My differences aren’t crimes. 

im banning ablebodied and neurotypical people from making games unless they have someone neurodivergent and disabled helping them or testing their game. im literally so sick of being unable to play games because nobody bothered to take into account that certain levels are straight up impossible unless you have extremely percise fine motor skills and reaction times. im sick of being driven to tears from frustration with my very minor hand tremors. im sick of vague directions and fast dialogue leaving me completely lost. im sick of seeing people be unable to play games cus the lack of very simple things like changing keybinds.

i understand that some games are designed to be as frustrating as possible and im perfectly fine with that. but singleplayer splatoon 2 levels shouldnt be making me so frustrated that i wanted to bite my fingers off. its advertised towards kids.

neurotypical/ablebodied ppl can reblog but if you try to be funny im going to block you this post isnt a joke and if you cant take it seriously then ur just ableist <3

this ended up getting way more notes than i expected it to get and many people have asked for suggestions on how to make games more accessible so here are some accessibility improvements game devs can work on. these features encompass many disabilities, disorders, or general issues people may have. some of them might not be feasible for your game but these are meant to be general suggestions.

colorblind modes: if your game relies on different colors to convey information it’s absolutely essential to include accessibility options for those who are colorblind.

screen readers: is there text on the screen that includes crucial information? provide a screen reader as an option for low-vision people.

adjustable ui size: this is very helpful for anyone who is low-vision and needs things to be larger!

closed captioning and subtitles: and not just for dialogue! do it for stuff like footsteps and guns shooting! and if you can make it so the direction its coming from is indicated.

font replacement/adjustment: dyslexia is a thing that exists! consider that when making games!

ability to turn off motion controls: self explanatory, i have occasional hand tremors and dont want to deal with that sometimes.

button remapping: it seems minor but its actually incredibly important to anyone who may not be able to use all their fingers or both hands or even have hands at all. 

options to automatically button mash or just eliminating the need to repeatedly click the same button quickly: i think thats just bad design and i havent met a single person who enjoys that in a game. anyone with arthritis, general joint pain, or limited mobility in their fingers will tell you that its not fun.

unambiguous warnings: this one is important. too many times ive seen horror games try to be cute or quirky with their trigger warnings. if you’re worried about spoilers then make the specific trigger list something you need to click to reveal, but for the love of god just. give us unambiguous warnings. 

minimizing flashing or bright colors/giving options to turn off flashing or bright colors/adequate warnings for flashing or bright colors: this should be a given but im shocked at how often this is ignored.

bonus if you really want to cover your bases. an arachnophobia mode: while arachnophobia isnt really a disability ive seen multiple cases of people not being able to play games due to their arachnophobia. this one is something that ive never seen a game do, its always 3rd party mods that deal with this. having a mode where you can replace or disable any spiders in the game would make games way more accessible to players who have arachnophobia. as common as arachnophobia is i think it would be a useful implementation for many people.

most of all: research accessibility options and get feedback from disabled and neurodivergent people!

if any other disabled and neurodivergent people want to add to this list feel free to do so.

i know basically all of what im about to link is already covered concisely in this post, but game maker’s tool kit made a designing for disability video series that goes into more depth on the subject

Is it true that only people with ADHD can unfocus their eyes on command???

That’s so weird to me, like I can’t imagine not being able to do that???

wait can other people not do that?

Wait some of y'all cant do this, wild

This isn't a normal thing????

Apperently not

wait this is an adhd thing???

It may also be an autism thing to, if some of the reblogs are to go by

huh

@alexandrintea as a fellow ADHD'er, can you do this?

@yooo-gara as a NT can you do this?

Yes, I can easily unfocus my eyes! I do it sometimes when I'm focusing inward, it helps limit the distracting outside stimuli! I didn't know there were people who couldn't?

Actually I'd like to ask @headspace-hotel and @itsaconfusionthing — can you guys unfocus your eyes on command?

Yeah I can do that, sometimes I’m like “ah this is nice” and don’t feel like focusing back lol

...I have a hard time believing that this ability is not common

From the responses, most people can do it at least. It would be still fun to figure out, that’s why we’re asking.

I doubt it has anything to do with ADHD. But it still might be another thing that some people can do and others can’t.

Please tell me non-ADHD people can do this as well! I can unfocus my eyes easily and have it and this is freaky. XD

Reblog if you would read a post-apocalyptic comic about disabled people

Seriously. Because I have an idea for one, and I want to see whether I can make it work. I don’t know if I can find an artist who’d be interested in collaborating on it, but if I can, I have some ideas on how to fund it. I just want to see enough people would be interested in it.

Surely I can’t be the only one who’s tired of the idea that the apocalypse would wipe out all disabled people because we couldn’t possibly survive. 

let me put it straight. disabled people are way way way way WAY less likely to survive in the unlikely event of an apocalypse. it’s already extremely unlikely for ANYONE to survive to begin with. and then someone who already faces difficulties in our modern world with all its accomodations? hard to imagine. so i hope for you that your story is so damn good and clever that it could work. otherwise it’S just garbage that lives on the suspension of disbelief the reader brings with him. and that is no basis for any good story.

Do you even have the first clue what a disability is? I’m asking, because you seem to be a very ignorant sort of person. Allow me to educate you a little.

“…our modern world with all its accomodations[sic]…” Bwahahaha! You silly, silly able-bodied person, you. What accommodations? You think the occasional wheelchair ramp and some IEPs count as accommodations? You have no idea. The modern world is already hugely inaccessible to disabled people. We’re used to it.

I bet you think “survival of the fittest” means survival of the strongest, the fastest, all of that, don’t you? But it doesn’t. It means survival of the most adaptable. You think you’re automatically more capable of surviving than people who have to adapt every single day of their lives to an inaccessible world? Do you even biology, bro?

Life has survived apocalypses on this planet before. The Permian-Triassic extinction event killed 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates and 96% of all marine life. Yet here we stand, because life did survive. And it isn’t the big, strong gorgonopsids that we descend from. They didn’t make it. Nope, it was the tiny diictodon. Diictodon, a creature little bigger than a chihuahua, that could burrow to survive the elements. In fact, it’s possible that diictodon, like modern lagomorphs, could sever tree roots as a source of water. They survived because they could adapt to the harsh changes in their environment. Not because they were the strongest or the fastest. 

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction (otherwise known as that thing that killed the non-avian dinosaurs) took out three-quarters of all plant and animal life on earth. And yet again, here we stand. And the reason for that is because there was life that could adapt, and once again, it wasn’t the biggest or the strongest. Why do you think avian dinosaurs (more commonly known as birds) are the only ones who survived? Because yeah, birds have some traits that make them very suited to survival, but odds are all dinosaurs had these traits. Yet all of the non-avian ones are gone. 

A combination of factors played into this. Many non-avian dinosaurs were far too large and specialized. Their strength and speed were no longer advantages after Chicxulub laid waste and the world began to deteriorate. And yeah, the birds had the advantage of flying, but that wasn’t the only thing. Birds were small, and they’d taken over a very important niche. As pterosaurs evolved, they grew from small flying insectivores to large, ground-stalking carnivores. They overspecialized into that niche, while birds started sitting pretty in the niche the pterosaurs left behind: Small, flying insectivores. Notably, it wasn’t just birds that survived, but most of what did survive was small, and thus in need of less energy than those big strong creatures that are gone now.

And why do you think it’s Homo sapiens that stands as the dominant hominid today? By all accounts, Neanderthals were actually stronger, faster, and smarter than us. Yet here we stand. Of course, modern science shows that to some degree, at least, Neanderthals were bred into Homo sapiens. But we still had an advantage over them. Being smaller, we needed less food for energy. A few bad years food-wise would knock down the Neanderthal population far more than it would the Homo sapiens one. For all we were not as big or as strong or as fast, we had an advantage in hard times.

Now tell me, taking all of that, why able-bodied and neurotypical people, who spend their lives sitting comfortably in their overspecialized niches, should be so very much better suited to survival to those of us who spend each and every day adapting?

Maybe it’s because you think we’re all bed-ridden and helpless? Newsflash: Disabilities come in many, many types. Maybe you think none of us can survive without modern medicine? Newsflash: Not only do many of us already survive without access to care that would make our lives easier, but the standards of modern medicine also illegalize substances like marijuana, which has been shown to be effective on disabilities ranging from glaucoma and fibromyalgia to ADHD and bipolar disorder. Legal narcotics aren’t the only effective ones, they’re just the only legal ones. Maybe you think none of us have any sort of useful skills? Or that we aren’t strong enough to protect ourselves? You go ahead and fuck with this guy after the apocalypse, see how far that gets you. 

Yeah, a lot of people wouldn’t survive an apocalypse. That’s part of the point of post-apocalyptic fiction, dude. But we make up one seventh of this world’s population and yet you think all one billion of us would go down simply because of your ignorant preconceptions?

Pfft. Please. We’ve survived you assholes for millennia. We have the same chances of survival as you do and we’re more used to adapting. 

I’m highly amused when abled folks think that they’re automatically the ones who would survive the apocalypse.  Aka, “The fittest” in “the survival of the fittest”.  

Fantastic response to such ignorance, seriously. 

BOOYAH.

As someone with fibromyalgia who is surrounded by same extreme survival narratives in the media, culture and entertainment as everyone else, I think about my chances in a post-apocalyptic landscape more than is useful. This is offset by the presence of my partner, who loves to gather survivalist tools, tips and tricks and is very physically able, but has some crucial vulnerabilities in priorities, ie, food, and having it on hand before you need it. (Look, I don’t know what other couples talk about of an evening.)

Further, the normalisation of the able-bodied seems to rest on the assumption that physical ability is not an evolving state. You get old, you can’t walk as far as you used to, run as fast, lift as much. That happens to everyone. You get sick and spend days helpless, or months helpless, or the rest of your life. Or it’s a post-apoc world and sanitation, sterilisation and medication aren’t available as they were, you scratch your ankle, get an infection and have to cut your foot off. You treat your body hard and there is no sports physiotherapy to help you with your knee, no means of getting a replacement and now you can no longer run. You slipped and cut your hand by accident, it healed wrong and you can’t flex it properly anymore. You get food poisoning so often you become weakened, without stamina, constantly falling ill with any passing sneeze. You have allergies and your eyes are watering so much you literally can’t see for days on end and you can’t do anything but sneeze and the world isn’t going to give you a break because you’re having a tough day. 

I’m not saying I have a better chance of surviving than any other able-bodied person, only that able-bodied people don’t actually have a better chance of surviving than me. 

I’d read the shit out of that comic. 

I doubt the mammals that survived the last great extinction didn’t have to get by with only half of their limbs working.

They also didn’t have fingers or thumbs, or brains capable of abstract and creative thinking that would allow them to fashion tools to assist them in the case of lost limbs.

Were you in such a rush to be an ableist shitstick that you forgot about those, or…?

I am crying this is so beautiful. Let me put this very clearly: I have an invisible disability and am autistic. Every day I curl and contort myself in ways that cause me discomfort up to and including screaming agony, because it is expected of me in the society I inhabit, and because that is a capitalist society it is essential to my survival that I do so. Let’s be real for just a moment. WE are used to doing this. How will you adjust when the world stops favouring you over us? Hmm? As for “non-functioning limbs” - do you know how much casual engineering takes place when people are physically disabled? Do you have any idea of the genius and creativity that go into our lives? Because we make do. And I have seen some shit that would drop your jaw. Because necessity is the mother of invention, and that necessity is eternally present in OUR lives. Guess where that experience in engineering’s going to come in handy? Where could it possibly be handy to be able to look at a situation and figure out how to make it work for the people for whom you need to make it work? I want to read this thing very badly, thank you!

I know, I keep reblogging this … but doing it again anyway bc how can I resist?!

Even when it just comes to normal everyday stress we can have a leg up. My restaurant went through a really, really awful three months where we had a grand total of THREE people on night shift (we currently have 10 and we’re still a little short). Clearly me, the girl with a messed up arm, high blood pressure, endometriosis, depression, and anxiety would be the first to crack, right?

Hell no! I already know how to work around everything hurting. I had to explain to multiple people that they were having an anxiety attack or panic attack (because if you push a neurotypical person far enough for long enough they CAN get those, it just takes way more) and they had NO IDEA HOW TO HANDLE IT. I might’ve ended up crying most nights but I was able to keep on sweeping the floor and making dough, whatever, because I have experience pushing through that. When they broke down everything stopped because they just flat out did not know how to handle it.

You really think someone who’s been healthy and pain free their whole life is going to be able to deal with the aches that come with severely increased physical activity better than someone who deals with pain constantly? Hell most painkillers don’t work on me anyway and what does barely does, so I wouldn’t even have to make that much of an adjustment if I don’t have access to ibuprofen. My endo pain sucks but you know what I can’t get help for that ANYWAY because our medical system sucks so much.

Besides which there’s plenty of research saying that disabilities like OCD or dyslexia are only disabilities in our modern culture. The hunter-gatherer who was constantly anxious about being attacked by a saber tooth tiger were going to be hyper aware of the warning signs and be more likely to see it coming. Again even in modern times this can show, I had a neurotypical coworker in the passenger seat and even though they were looking around at traffic they completely missed the idiot who almost slammed into us because running a stopsign is clearly a good idea. I saw it and was able to react in time because I am HYPER PARANOID ABOUT TRAFFIC.

And as was pointed out above this isn’t one person against the zombie hoard or whatever. Humans are social animals and we’re going to group together in the case of apocalypse. I might not be able to dead lift my own weight and on my bad days the pain bogs me down, but you know what? I know how to cook, garden, build a kiln, make pottery, how to form metal, how to weave, how to build a loom, knit, how to budget, I know geometry, I’ve had first aid training, I know how to set up a tent, build a fire, I know carpentry… My arms might be made of noodles (which I can make btw) but I am DAMN valuable.

It’s not about who can take on the world on their own because NO ONE CAN. Doesn’t matter how awesome you are with a knife, eventually that thing is going to wear out and if you don’t know how to make a new one then you’re screwed. Any group that works properly compliments each other, be it a pair of spouses or a workplace or a rag tag band of survivors building a new life. You say that a person in a wheelchair won’t last as long as Rambo if they get attacked by a rabid radioactive wolf? Okay. Does Rambo know how to build a radio? Because oh shit that person in the wheelchair does! When they still couldn’t get out of the hospital bed they watched a lot of youtube how toos, okay? The best scenario is not to junk anyone who’s not perfectly fit but for Rambo to protect the person in the wheelchair and the person in the wheelchair to build a radio so they can communicate with other survivors, and meet up to form a bigger, even harder to kill group. Humans are fucking weak compared to a lot of species, but we’re the dominant force on the planet because there’s strength in numbers and because if evolution hasn’t given us something we will hack a way around it.

I mean, do you really think that armies that are on the ground for months or years at a time don’t have the support of cooks, mechanics, medical personnel, and so on and so forth? Even entertainers like the USO play an important role in morale. If you don’t have an actual medical professional then someone who’s spent a good chunk of their life on the receiving end isn’t a bad second fiddle. And that’s not to say the person missing a leg isn’t a doctor themselves, who’d'a thought??? There are so many valuable skills to have in a survival situation and just so few of them are dependent on being able bodied, PARTICULARLY when we can build prosthetics or otherwise compensate for that kind of thing.

I really love this response a lot, because this is exactly what I meant.

I know that not everyone will survive an apocalypse, and yes, some disabled people will have major disadvantages–so will some perfectly able-bodied people, too. 

But when you’re disabled, the media loves to make you useless and tell you that all you have are weaknesses. Except we’re people too. We deal with things in our lives that give us strength we often don’t realize we have. The sheer pain I can take without making a sound would, I think, astonish someone who isn’t used to being in pain all the time. And since I’m a person just like everyone else, I have hobbies and skills that translate to useful traits in a bad situation. I’m really good at growing plants, for example (one year the flowers in one of my window boxes got so tall, they were almost as tall as the actual window). 

I’m not writing yet another utterly cynical post-apocalyptic story in which everyone is too busy being assholes to work together. This is a story about disabled people pooling their strengths and coming through a hell of a lot of challenges together. 

I was just thinking about this post when I discussed disability with my son (and intersections between axes of oppression). I said to him, “We need accommodations, but non-disabled people already HAVE accommodations - it’s just that their accommodations are considered the default.”

And let me tell you, I don’t know a single disabled person who isn’t USED to not getting the required accommodations. Conversely, I don’t know a single non-disabled person who is used to that. Post-apocalyptic Earth, for us, is going to be a continuation of living in a world which wasn’t designed for us.

Who’s going to be more shell-shocked by that change, I wonder?

People confuse spectrum and gradient all the time. If it’s a variation of a single thing (especially going less to more), that’s a gradient and not a spectrum.

Is it bad that my doctors refer to spectrum as a gradient?

It depends on what they are referring to. If they are referring to what most people think of the word “spectrum” in relation to autism (aka the functioning labels), then they’re actually correct. That is technically a gradient. Gradients go from less of something to more of something.

Where a spectrum is where there is variation of multiple aspects of a particular thing.

Doctors really shouldn’t be using functioning labels since they aren’t in the ICD-10 and the DSM-V scale isn’t written as functioning labels but as support labels. But since it’s so ingrained into society, they do it anyway. So while technically correct that this reference would be a gradient, it’s still bad that your doctors are referring to the spectrum as such.