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Written by Aaron on 2025-01-29 at 15:49

Someone plays music in the background during a meeting. They ask if it's bothering people. Neurotypical folks on the call quickly speak up and say it's fine.

The autistic person on the call (me):

1. has extreme difficulty participating in or even following the meeting due to the inability to separate foreground from background noise

2. experiences distress from sensory overload

3. spends the whole meeting stressing over how to bring it up in a side channel without taking the wrong tone and offending the person due to social communication difficulties

4. questions whether it should even be brought up, or if they're just being "too sensitive" due to a lifetime of conditioning to treat their own needs as invalid just because they're aren't "typical"

Meanwhile, no one on the call even realizes something is wrong or that the autistic person just got screwed over, completely by accident.

[#]Disability

[#]Accessibility

[#]AccessibilityMatters

[#]Autism

[#]ActuallyAutistic

@actuallyautistic

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Written by Aaron on 2025-01-29 at 15:56

@actuallyautistic This isn't an occasional thing. This sort of silent sidelining of our needs happens literally every day, though the details vary. The end result is a feeling of being trapped and your own needs not mattering. There's also a massive load of stress from dealing with these situations, which results in perpetual fatigue & low energy, a weakened immune system, and often depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. And then we are blamed for not paying attention or not being engaged enough. It's a perpetual snowball effect.

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Written by Aaron on 2025-01-29 at 15:59

@actuallyautistic

Little things done to be respectful of others' needs have an outsized positive impact on other people's lives -- especially those of us who don't fit in as well, and have unusual needs that others overlook on a regular basis.

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Written by Aaron on 2025-01-30 at 07:42

@actuallyautistic

Addendum: Please do not come into my mentions and tell me I should have spoken up. Like many autistic people, I can be slower to process verbal communication. By the time I realized what was happening, everyone else had already answered, and the conversation had moved on. The person who was playing the music already knows I'm autistic. The whole reason for my post is to address the general ignorance I find in society surrounding the impacts of these sorts of behaviors on autistic people. I am speaking up, in other words. Right here, right now. My hope is that more people will think twice about doing this sort of thing in the first place, before it becomes an awkward and stressful situation where the onus for correcting the problem falls squarely on the very person who has a disability affecting social communication.

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Toot

Written by Gry on 2025-01-30 at 11:23

@hosford42 @actuallyautistic Thanks for sharing and raising awareness! It can be hard to speak up even if you have the best communication skills. Not everyone is good at taking feedback. I think it is very important to be considerate when participating in meetings. Background noise, even if it is pretty music, is a bad idea. Many struggle with background noise for various reasons and it ought to be normal politeness to ensure that the environment is quiet and distraction-free

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