AuTube: Innovative New Online Autism Discussion Site

by Dora Raymaker · 2009-05-16 10:34:00 UTC
Topics:

The Dan Marino Foundation has launched a new web site, AuTube. The site takes advantage of the vastness of today's communication tools--from YouTube to Twitter to Podcasting to multi-media blogging--but also anchors itself solidly around single, pin-pointed autism-related topics.

Each month a new autism-related topic is presented, along with information from experts on the topic. Site members can then discuss the topic, recommend resources (such as web sites, books, films, and blogs), take a quick survey, and make recommendations for future topics. More information at Media dis&dat.

This is definitely not the same old same old. June's question is the brilliantly self-reflective "is autism portrayed accurately in the media?" and the experts are not afraid to go deep into the issue and presume sharp intelligence on the part of their audience. Provocative, but (thankfully) not sensationalist.

Moreover, this is a model for online interaction that is deeply different from the direction online interaction has been going lately with smaller and smaller bites of information zipping by faster and faster, with often only the surface of issues able to be skimmed. Even here in this space (with blogging being much slower than say Twitter) in less than two days most posts slip off the front page, and out of sight or mind. The ability to slow down and take a whole month to discuss a rich piece of issue is a new sort of model that may (hopefully) encourage some more in depth assessment of key issues.

Can't wait to see how the site develops.

However, as much as I adore the site it has a massive failing, which is that it's deeply inaccessible to anyone who has difficulty with hearing. The expert tracks are not transcribed, the video is not captioned, and there is no where that I could find on the site where a text version of anything--not even the "about this site" information--was presented. I hope that this issue is corrected quicklly, because it is a substantial barrier to participation those of us who have difficulty processing auditory information (which may include a fairly large number of people on the spectrum).

Dora Raymaker
PREVIOUS STORY:
All Grown Up and Still At Home
NEXT STORY:
Why I'm Asking Aetna to Cover My Surgery

COMMENTS (12)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.