Today’s episode explores the exclusion and epistemic harm experienced by Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs), particularly autistic individuals, within technology and professional spaces that claim to be inclusive. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, recounts a specific incident where their comment, flagging “jump on a call” as an access barrier for GLPs, was dismissed and deleted by a tech founder building an app for neurodivergent people. This highlights a broader issue where analytic language processing (ALP) norms dominate, leading to the invalidation and erasure of GLP communication styles, which often rely on metaphor, scripting, and asynchronous processing. Dr. Hoerricks argues that this isn’t merely a misunderstanding but a systemic problem where well-intentioned inclusion efforts often become “access theatre,” failing to genuinely accommodate diverse communication needs and instead perpetuating harm by prioritising conventional interaction formats.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/not-relevant-to-the-conversation
Let me know what you think.
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