Visual Supports Maybe Not for All

One of the things that the presenter at the not-so-great job workshop kept hammering on was the use of visual supports for people on the spectrum in employment. While the use of visual tools for organization, transition, learning, and communication is not to be dismissed (indeed I am the sort who relys on these sorts of things), the black-and-white assumption that visual supports help all people on the spectrum is worrisome.

Some percentage of people on the spectrum overlap with features of "nonverbal learning disorder" (not a clinical diagnosis but in common usage currently); there is discussion at times of whether NLD and AS are the same thing, different, or whether AS folks can additionally have (overlap with) NLD.

Direct reports from some people on the spectrum confirm difficulties with visual processing that would make visual supports ineffective. Aquamarine Blue 5 contributer Darius writes, "Today, it is assumed that visualizing problems for autistic children will help them learn, but this may not be the case for all forms of autism. Visual stimuli simply don't enter my brain in a meaningful way. This was probably the reason why I used to talk to myself all the time. I translated everything explicitly into language."

I noted other reports on difficulties with visual processing, such as visual agnosia and visual distortions here. Some of us may struggle with making sense of cartoon images like those used by PECS but be OK with photographs or more realistic renderings.

Once I was working with a parent who described her son's math difficulties as only understanding word problems, and only completing operations if someone says the steps out loud. We ended up inventing a strategy, of using word problems as a bridge to symbolic math, and having all steps for completing mathematical operations written down in text. If written text doesn't process well, steps could be recorded and played back aurally.

If educators and support staff are lead to believe that visual supports by definition help all people on the spectrum, then they might end up applying the wrong tool for teaching or supporting someone, or a person may be given tools for communication that they can't use instead of ones they can use. Generalizations can be useful, but they can also be dangerous if made without question or caveat.