I’ve noticed quite often lately that when people think about accessibility, it’s often in one particular form: making things usable for people who use wheelchairs and other mobility devices. Now, of course, that’s not a bad thing; any effort toward making things accessible to anyone with disabilities, assuming it’s actually done well, is a much needed improvement.

But as important as this is, it’s not the be-all and end-all of accessibility. And yet, so often, I see people acting as if just making things wheelchair-accessible is enough to be considered accessible. I’ve even seen a number of disability-specific businesses and event planners who, although they took wheelchair access into account, still failed to offer basic accommodations that would’ve benefited actual people with disabilities.

Remember my BADD post from last year, about the disability advocacy conference runners who failed to actually make the planning process accessible to real people with disabilities? The sorts of things I described there are not rare. They’re…all too common, actually.

It’s when this isn’t the case—when people really do consider more than just a single facet of accessibility—that I’m truly surprised. And I can think of a couple of recent experiences that have demonstrated this to me.

First, as I’ve discussed here previously, I’ve moved from small-town Georgia to the inner suburbs of Boston for my employment. I’m also quite open about not feeling safe as a driver due to a variety of weird perceptual issues that come with my autistic spectrum disorder. And one thing that continues to impress me here, even after living here for several months, is that there’s such a large variety of stuff that is easily accessible via public transit.

But it’s not just the fact that these places are accessible via transit. After all, plenty of places could be reached by bus when I was living in Georgia. Some of them were even easily walkable from the bus stop, rather than requiring traipsing through a parking lot the size of a football field just to reach the front door (which, incidentally, is another pattern that I’ve found much less prevalent here). And it’s not just the fact that transit service simply runs more often here, and at more times of the day, than where I was living in Georgia.

No, what I’ve found most refreshing is that businesses and event runners will actively promote their accessibility to transit service, something which I rarely, if ever, saw in Georgia. Brochures, flyers and web sites—sometimes even for places and events in the suburbs!—will outright specify which subway stop to travel to, and which bus route to take from there if necessary. And if they don’t, it’s not a complete loss; the MBTA‘s site is there to help, with a trip planner that will provide a list of all the necessary stops and routes that one needs to use.

It’s all such a refreshing change from the sorts of reactions I often got when I asked places about their bus accessibility back in Georgia. (“I think it’s on route 20? Maybe?”…if not telling me the wrong route entirely.)

Speaking of transit service, I went to a hearing several months ago on the planned cuts that the MBTA was considering to bus and train service in the area—an important concern, since one of these proposed cuts was a complete elimination of the bus route by which I commute to work. Normally, such an event would’ve been utterly overwhelming for me, particularly after a busy day at work like the one I had just finished. I was a bit worried, in fact, that this would be more of the same when I first arrived. But once I got into the room where the hearing was being held, I realized this one would be different.

You see, not only was there a sign-language interpreter at this event, but there was also live captioning. A stenographer sat in the corner, transcribing everything that was said at the hearing. And rather than straining to decipher what was being said as I usually have to do, with the added distortion from a microphone and with ambient noise interfering from all around, I could just read it. Sure, there were occasional typos and omissions, as anyone who’s watched live captioning on TV should be familiar with—but even so, I could still pick up on so much of what my dodgy auditory processing couldn’t. Even when ambient noises got in the way, even when the speaker’s accent was difficult for me to decipher, I had written text to fall back on.

This sort of advocacy usually leaves me quite exhausted by the end, from having to process so many different speakers’ speech patterns in a short amount of time with so many random factors interfering. But this particular hearing didn’t do that for me. When I got back on the subway after the event to catch my transfer back home, I was just as clear-headed as when I had walked into the hearing.

And it really does seem like the availability of captioning was the factor that made things so different that time. I’ve gone to other disability-related events since then where such an accommodation wasn’t available, and I felt the same sense of fatigue afterward that I usually do.

Of course, not everyone can afford to hire a live captioner for an event (although if a publicly funded transportation system that is running low on funding can manage it, the cost can’t be too incredibly prohibitive). Not every business can manage to be extremely convenient to a bus route, or even in a city with a reasonably good transportation system.

But accommodations don’t even need to go that far. There’s one particular accommodation that surprises me precisely because of how many businesses I find that can’t be bothered to implement it despite its simplicity.

Specifically, it is honestly surprising to me when an organization with which I want to get in touch actually offers some sort of online method of contact—whether it’s a live text-based chat, a secure contact form, or even a good old-fashioned e-mail address—in addition to a phone number. And it surprises me even more when that e-mail address is actually answered promptly, because so many businesses that I’ve dealt with simply don’t give online communication remotely the same priority as phone calls.

And in the year 2012, when internet access is so pervasive that even some of the most bare-bones mobile phones can send and receive e-mail…this really shouldn’t be as uncommon as it is.

I’ll try to get something up at some point this week; after all, although Autism Awareness Day is nearly over, there’s a whole 28 days still left in Autism Awareness Month.

Edited to add: If you can handle more snark and irreverence than I usually post here, feel free to check out the ‘autism’ tag on my Tumblr blog, where I’ve been reblogging and commenting on stuff for a good part of the day. Less effort than writing an actual substantial post, after all…

But there’s a reason I was too busy: I had just begun my first week of work at a full-time job since leaving graduate school. Yes, even in spite of all the employment challenges I’ve mentioned in the past, I still managed to find work in this economy.

And it’s not just any job; it’s a chance to work on something I’m quite interested in. Though my life-long dream of being a contestant on Jeopardy! still remains unfulfilled, I’ve managed to do something that you could say is functionally equivalent.

I feel safe disclosing it at this point, now that I’ve been on the job for a week, so I’ll go ahead and state it: I’m now a research engineer at Nuance Communications, working on the DeepQA project—the software powering the Watson supercomputer that defeated the two reigning Jeopardy! champs—as part of a joint research agreement between Nuance and IBM. (As an aside, to cover all the legal bases: everything I discuss below is my own personal opinion, and I’m not speaking as a representative of either Nuance or IBM.)

And this opportunity wouldn’t have been available without plenty of reasonable accommodation—which is exactly what I wanted to write about for Autistics Speaking Day.

As always, the things which have given me the greatest challenges, both in the application process and in my actual time at work so far, have little to do with the actual technical aspects of the job. Sure, there’s sifting through research-oriented code whose organization tends to be quite messy, and there’s having to learn my way around new application frameworks that I’ve never dealt with before now—but I’ve played around with enough open-source projects that I’ve gotten fairly used to this learning curve.

No, my biggest challenges have involved communication… a rather hilarious irony for someone working for a company whose entire line of products involves natural language processing.

The greatest challenge, by far, has involved that ever-frustrating bugbear of mine, the telephone. In fact, I was quite worried that things would go downhill quickly when I got the first response to my job application, a voice-mail message asking me to call back with no other contact information. But I did call back—from a quiet room, using headphones and a VoIP system to ensure that I could hear things clearly—and I’m glad I did.

Through that call, I obtained an e-mail address through which I could continue my discussion with the recruiter. And from there, the process went fairly smoothly. Initial communication took place via e-mail, which gives me a much better chance to get my words together coherently and lessens the chance that I might mishear something drastically wrongly. Interviews which would normally be held by phone were instead held via Skype, allowing me to hear the questions much more clearly, and in at least some cases, to see the interviewer as well. And before I knew it—much to my surprise, given how several previous job applications had fared!—I received an official offer of employment.

In the intervening time, I found that many things which could have been challenges for me were surprisingly non-issues. I was given plenty of leeway regarding relocation, and allowed to begin my employment via telecommuting, with a combination of e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, and screen-sharing software taking the place of face-to-face meetings. (Given that the development team already straddles the US-Canada border as it is, reaching out virtually to a remote worker in Georgia was not at all difficult to accommodate.) Thus, I have enough time to take a trip up to Boston to get familiar with the environment and find a suitable apartment before I actually have to move in January, rather than being rushed into a new living arrangement too quickly for me to deal with.

As for transportation… it’s a hassle while I’m working remotely, to be sure, but it will totally be a non-issue once I’ve moved. I’ll obviously get a better idea once I actually go up to visit in a week, but from my research online, I can already tell that Boston will be a much more suitable place for a non-driver like me than small-town Georgia. Neighborhoods tend to be much more walkable (even in some suburban areas!), almost everything I need is accessible either on foot or by transit 7 days a week, and I can even get my groceries delivered, thus eliminating the need for many trips to the store.

The only thing I’ve actually found to be remotely challenging so far involves a weekly group conference between Nuance and IBM. Because of various factors beyond our control, these meetings can only be held by phone. And yet, even this isn’t a total challenge; I discovered that I can call through Google Voice on my computer, run the output through a graphic equalizer, and hear things much more clearly—still not as good as Skype, but nonetheless better. (Seriously, why did I not think to try this before?) I probably ought to look into getting an amplified phone with really fine-grained tone control or something. And those things I still manage to miss are clarified fairly well in the meeting minutes that are sent out each week, so even that’s not necessarily an issue.

It honestly surprises me how smoothly my experiences have gone so far—largely because so many past experiences with seeking employment haven’t gone so smoothly. And, in large part, this was because of my new employer’s willingness to make a few simple accommodations.

No, it’s not that I can’t do them. I’ve proven without a doubt that I can, having lived in my own apartment for several years. It’s just that they’re significantly more stressful and overwhelming than they are for your average neurotypical person.

Take getting groceries, for instance. For most people, the steps are basically: Drive to the grocery store. Take as long as you need to get groceries. Get them. Cart them back out to the car. Drive home, and get them back out.

For me, it’s more like: Take sufficient downtime to make sure that I can process things when I actually get to the grocery store. Wait for bus. Keep waiting, because it’s invariably running late. Catch bus when it arrives. Hurry to get groceries before the next bus arrives, as there’s only one per hour, and the routes in either direction are staggered. Also hurry because the fluorescent lights and noises are overloading. Buy the groceries, making sure not to buy more than you can carry in one trip. Keep waiting at the bus stop, because it’s invariably running late in that direction as well. Ride the bus back, then cross the street back to the apartment with a bunch of heavy bags in tow.

Is it any surprise I need even more downtime after all that?

Similar issues hold for things like cleaning sinks, between the smell of the cleaning solution and tactile issues (I’ve found that I can’t clean at all without wearing gloves, and even then, stuff often ends up getting under the gloves). Or cooking—I need so much downtime to prepare, and need such a clear head to actually do the cooking, that after a busy day, I’d rather just microwave, eat something raw, or go out to eat. And let’s not even get started on laundry—washing and drying isn’t much of an issue, but I usually just leave my clothes wrinkly because ironing is so stressful, especially with my coordination problems.

In short: because it takes me so long to handle these daily living activities, and because they’re so stressful as to require more downtime, I end up getting less actual work done as a result. And my life would be greatly eased by services or accommodations to make these activities less stressful.

But that’s exactly the problem: that I can do these things. Assuming I even could get services to help out with such issues (which is already in question, since I’m over 21, “high-functioning”, and have an above-average IQ—but that’s something for another blog post entirely), the request might still be denied, since I’m obviously able to do the things I’m asking for help for. Completely ignoring, of course, how much more difficult they are for me than for an average non-autistic person—clearly I can do them, so I don’t need even the slightest bit of help, right?

(Oh, yeah, and in further irony, accessing a lot of these support services in the first place requires making a phone call. Yeah, immediate barrier right there for some people with disabilities, myself included!)

This is closely related to what several bloggers observed on Blogging Against Disablism Day, including Jennifer Fitz and Anne at The Trick Is To Keep Reading. The whole support system is designed with the assumption that because you can do something, you’re consistently able to do it, and it’s no harder for you than for anyone else who can do it. And if you reveal that you need support for something, but it’s later discovered that you can do it—no matter what difficulty is involved!—you’ll end up being called a faker.

(I actually have a bit of personal experience with this phenomenon myself. I can’t hear on the phone very well, but can communicate face-to-face without much issue because the sound is clearer and because I can fall back on reading lips. Suffice it to say: people get very confused when someone who called them via TTY relay can carry on a face-to-face conversation perfectly fine.)

And so, despite the fact that such services would make my life significantly easier and less stressful? I’m left to basically handle these things on my own. Yes, I can get help from friends and family—but that hardly solves the issue when they may not always be around to help. This, too, is an issue I’ve encountered many times; on several occasions, I’ve made plans with a friend to run errands together, which ended up not coming to fruition due to illness or schedule conflicts. (And of course, by the time I’ve found this out, there are often no more buses I can catch to run those errands.)

The following list is based entirely on my own experiences with several recent self-advocacy opportunities that opened themselves up to me. Despite the fact that many of these events may sound like something out of an absurdist comedy, all of the below occurrences are things that actually happened to me in trying to participate in one conference or another.

How Not To Invite Self-Advocates To Your Disability Conference

• Require physical attendance at the conference. Do not provide any way for a self-advocate to contribute via the internet, despite the fact that many autistic people find conferences to be sensory overload, and despite the fact that many people with disabilities may not be able to afford or access transportation.

• Mention the date of the conference in only two e-mails— one sent a month before the conference, when attendees still aren’t sure whether they’ll even be attending, and one sent just two days before it. It’s not as if people with neurological disabilities have bad memories.

• When asked about funding for transportation, give a vague non-answer and let that be all for several weeks. When asked for further details, wait a bit longer, then give a still-inconclusive answer which does not clarify whether reimbursement will occur before or after the conference. People with disabilities can all afford a round-trip bus ride across the state and/or an overnight hotel stay, right?

• When a potential attendee asks for directions via bus, suggest using a bus system that does not even cover that suburb.

• Hold all communication with the team via conference telephone calls, with no provision for live captioning and no alternative meetings via text chat. When asked about this, stumble and suggest calling via relay.

  • Continue to suggest that self-advocates contact you via phone for further information even when they have already explained multiple times that they cannot hear well over the phone.

  • When a self-advocate does call in via relay, talk so fast that the relay operators can’t keep up, never identify who’s saying what, and never give the ‘go ahead’ for the relay-using self-advocate to speak his part. Continue talking even when the relay operator says to hold on because another operator has to take his place.

  • Ignore the self-advocate’s other suggestions entirely, such as holding the meeting via Skype (which has better sound quality, avoiding the muffling from regular phone lines) or relaying the important points live via instant messaging.

  • Do all of these things despite the fact that the relay-using caller has explained all of these issues involved with relay via e-mail prior to the call.

  • After the first one goes so badly, and a self-advocate has told you as much, continue to hold meetings via conference call with no alternatives.

• As another alternative, provide a screencasting feature that allows viewers to see the slideshow and its notes. Make sure it only supports Windows, with dodgy support for Linux and none for Mac OS. Don’t actually test it to see whether it even works in Windows as claimed.

• Promise to send summaries/minutes of the conferences within several days of the call, to make up for the failure of accessibility during the call. Never actually send these minutes.

• Assume that all self-advocates who have been recommended by a particular organization are formally affiliated with that organization in a leadership role, and repeatedly ask them unanswerable questions about that role.

  • Assume that every national or international disability organization with members in your state has a branch within your state.

• Assume that a developmentally disabled person has any sort of remotely comprehensive idea about the extent of disability-related organizations in their state as a whole, and especially about organizational resources such as funding and meeting spaces.

  • Assume that a self-advocate who has lived his entire life downstate has any clue about organizations and resources that are nearly all upstate, especially when inter-city transportation is so lacking.

• Ask an autistic person vague questions like “What has worked in your state?” and “What are the challenges in your state?” with no further context whatsoever.

  • When a self-advocate e-mails to ask for clarification of these questions, be equally vague in your reply.

• And, after a self-advocate has gone through this entire rigmarole, proudly state in an e-mail to all attendees that “if allies are to be part of the movement, they need to be held accountable. Information must be accessible.” (Actual quote, folks. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.)

However, this doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing occasional musings elsewhere. Check out my Twitter feed and my Tumblr posts tagged “autism” for my thoughts that haven’t been substantial enough to expand into full-length blog posts.

Something I’ve noticed, as I keep an eye on Twitter searches and Google Reader, is that what counts for autism awareness is… rather shallow, honestly. One particular ‘awareness’ campaign I’ve seen referenced a lot lately involves putting blue lightbulbs in one’s outside lights, and wearing blue clothing. If I may ask… how does this even indicate that autism exists to someone who doesn’t know about it, much less indicate what autism actually is?

And that’s another thing. Many of these awareness-raising efforts that I’m finding describe more about the campaign itself than about, well, what they’re raising awareness for. At least one site I’ve seen people linking to describes the awareness campaign in great detail on the front page, but hides the actual description of autism several links deep, below the fold.

Surely I can’t be the only one who sees this as a problem?

Honestly, I think we need to move beyond mere awareness. With all the public service announcements and such that I’ve seen, I’d venture to say lots of people are aware that there’s some sort of condition known as autism, that it exists, and that a lot of people have it. But as someone who actually is on the autistic spectrum, I’ve also noticed that this awareness generally doesn’t make people any more clued in about autism.

What we need is understanding of autism—which automatically encompasses awareness as well; if you understand something, after all, you’re surely aware of it.

People don’t get that autism comes in many forms—that, as some people have said, “if you’ve seen one autistic person, you’ve seen one autistic person.” That despite PSAs shining a spotlight on extreme cases, not all cases are of equal severity. That even among cases of equal severity, it may present quite differently from person to person.

People don’t get that autistic kids grow up to be equally autistic adults, because so much of the materials used for awareness exclusively show children, even when they do mention in a side note that autism is a life-long condition.

People don’t get that autism isn’t just about socialization and communication– that it also has sensory aspects, too. That the reason an autistic kid doesn’t listen may be because he or she can’t decipher speech due to garbled sensory input. That the reason an autistic kid doesn’t want to hug or maintain eye contact may be because he or she finds it literally painful.

People don’t get that events, and sometimes even social structures themselves, can be confusing at best and inaccessible at worst to an autistic person—and that it’s not necessarily the autistic person’s fault. People often don’t even imagine that autistic people might want to participate in events and in society, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary—much less consider what might make these things so inaccessible or how to remedy them. Nor do they imagine that autistic people might find ways around these accessibility barriers and be active participants.

And often, people don’t get that other people sometimes just like to be left alone… both autistic and neurotypical. (I could probably go on a whole other rant about introversion and how it’s treated by society as a whole…)

If people understood autism to the same extent that they were aware of it, we might even begin to see more acceptance. That even in the worst times, even when they’re acting out, even when communication is a serious challenge, autistic people are still human—and still deserve to be a part of society, treated with respect, as much as everyone else.

I’ve noticed something related quite often in many discussions of autism that I’ve followed both online and offline: an othering of autistics, an ‘us versus them’ where the ‘us’ is non-autistic and the ‘them’ is autistic. This sort of discussion is almost always uncomfortable for me, because generally—even as a ‘high-functioning’ autistic—I feel far more kinship with the ‘them’ in this equation than with the ‘us.’

And it’s amazing how many prominent figures in the dialogue about autism make these same mistakes, over and over and over again.

Today has been declared Autism Acceptance Day by Paula Durbin-Westby, as a counterpart to the World Autism Awareness Day that is occurring tomorrow. And that is why I’m posting this today: to stress that society as a whole really need to go beyond awareness into understanding and even acceptance of autism.

There is one project I’ve been helping out with that is a wonderful antidote to this lack of understanding and acceptance: The Gateway Project. What they’re trying to do is to help make things more accessible for autistic people—and they’re doing it with active help from people on the spectrum. All of their studies are designed with four values in mind: they are inclusive of autistic people in the planning stages, are written to be respectful of autistics, are designed to be accessible to autistics from the start, and are intended to produce results that are actually relevant to autistic people in day-to-day life. You’re welcome to participate even if you’re not autistic; these studies are partly designed to observe how experiences differ between people on and off the spectrum, so that it becomes apparent what could use improvement in order to produce these relevant results.

The thing is, to me, this seemed rather counterintuitive. The whole thing was supposed to be a simulation of the communication challenges faced by autistics— but they didn’t very well mimic the issues that I had. In fact, textual communication via online social networks is easiest for me— when I first logged onto the internet in 1996 (wow, I feel old), it was so freeing that I could communicate with people halfway around the world without having to deal with any of that pesky deciphering of spoken language! A much better simulation, in my opinion, would’ve been to only socialize online, and not use speech for the entire day instead.

So instead of that event, I decided to join a counter-event proposed by autistic blogger Corina Becker: Autistics Speaking Day, in which autistics and allies were to flood social networks rather than abstaining from them.

Thus, I’ve been tweeting all day on my Twitter feed (which I’ll still continue to post autism-related stuff, incidentally). And I decided I’d post something here as well.

I decided, given that this is all about autism awareness, why not provide some counterexamples to prevalent stereotypes and myths about autism? I already did a bit of this last April on DailyKos, but since then, I’ve thought of five more myths that needed debunking.

So here we go…

MYTH: Autistics are all intellectually impaired.

FACT: Autism and intellectual disability are not directly connected. There are some autistics with above-average IQs— and, for that matter, there are others with below-average IQs. And that really doesn’t mean a lot anyway, because IQ tests can produce drastically misleading results for people on the autism spectrum… but that’s probably worth another rant entirely.

MYTH: Autistics are all savants.

FACT: Nope, this one’s not true either. Sure, there are some autistics with savant skills. But there are plenty more of us without any such skills at all.

MYTH: Autistics are monolithic, in general.

FACT: As several people have put it, “if you’ve seen one autistic person, you’ve seen one autistic person.” We’re as varied as neurotypicals.

MYTH: Autistics don’t have imaginations.

FACT: Autistic people may not play imaginatively in the same way, but we definitely have imaginations. Remember sitting in a box as a kid and pretending you were on TV? Yeah, I did that. I also distinctly remember racing Matchbox cars around the bathtub. And let’s not even get into the dinosaur fights (yep, like pretty much every other kid, I had a bunch of dinosaur figures).

And I’m hardly the only one. Corina Becker, mentioned above, is also a writer and cartoonist. Dora Raymaker, another online friend of mine, is an artist and writer. And even with more mundane things like computer programming, some degree of creativity is still a necessity. And these are just the people I know; let’s not even get into more famous autistics like Gary Numan!

MYTH: Autistics have no sense of humor.

FACT: We may not have a normal sense of humor, but yeah, most of us have a sense of humor. In my experience, autistic humor tends to lean toward the absurd; Monty Python is a perennial favorite amongst many autistics, for instance. Humor that mocks absurdities of everyday life is also much loved amongst autistics. What many of us don’t care so much for is humor that belittles others for things that are beyond their control— something that’s all too common in modern comedy, sadly.

So those are the five myths I felt like debunking today. If you found that interesting, be sure to check out my prior mythbusting post on DailyKos. (And for those of you who don’t lean to the political left, I’ll emphasize that that particular post is quite neutral politically— as are most of the other KosAbility posts too, for that matter.)

An important concept in social justice circles is the idea of privilege. For those unacquainted with the concept, perhaps the easiest way to describe it is that by being born into a certain group (race, gender, economic class, etc.), you’ve automatically, even unconsciously, been given an advantage in certain matters as a part of that group. This, of course, even applies to disability: if you’re not disabled, you’re automatically granted advantages that many disabled people will have to work for at best, or may never attain at worst.

I’d write about neurotypical privilege here, since that’s the most obvious case that’d be relevant to my own disabilities, but Bev from Square 8 has already created a neurotypical privilege checklist that’s so good, I don’t think I could ever manage to outdo it. (And besides, I contributed a couple items to it myself!)

However, along with Asperger’s syndrome, I also have auditory processing disorder. It affects pretty much every act of spoken communication I participate in, so it’s not something that can be easily ignored. And I’ve noticed that many people don’t even consider how certain activities can be discriminatory to those of us with abnormal hearing or auditory processing.

I wish I could provide an outright hearing privilege checklist, but that’d be problematic given that I have at least some privilege in that respect myself. My hearing itself is OK; I’m overly sensitive to noises, and I have perfect pitch that’s a blessing for solving the Selenitic Age in Myst but a curse when I’m asked to play on a piano that’s horribly out of tune. At the same time, because of my auditory processing disorder, I do share many of the same difficulties understanding speech that someone who’s deaf or hard of hearing would have. Nonetheless, it’d be best to refer to this as an auditory processing privilege checklist, not a hearing one.

So, without further ado:

The Normal Auditory Processing Privilege Checklist

• I can watch first-run movies in any theater and still understand a majority of the dialogue without having to attend a specially scheduled screening with subtitles.
• I can watch movies on streaming services and comprehend the dialogue with the same ease that I could with a DVD rental.
• TV shows are equally accessible to me whether I record from TV or watch them online. I could drop my cable TV subscription without losing access to those shows.
• I can easily carry on conversations with several other people in a bar or restaurant, no matter how noisy the place is.
• I can easily understand what people say to me on the phone, and do not have to frequently ask for repetition.
• If I want a smartphone data plan, the minimum required voice plan of 300–400 minutes that must accompany it is not overkill.
• I can decipher the lyrics for most songs without having to look them up.
• Rock concerts are at a perfectly reasonable level; I don’t need to stand at the back or remember to bring earplugs.
• I can understand messages broadcast over PA systems without a lot of difficulty.
• Lectures are just as easy for me to comprehend without visual feedback such as PowerPoint as they are with visual feedback.

You’ve likely never thought about how many of these experiences aren’t universal, or how these situations might be discriminatory— and that’s precisely the point of this. I see so many posts, for instance, talking about eliminating cable subscriptions and going to online TV viewing; yet most of the cable-only shows I’m interested in, if they are available online in the first place, aren’t captioned in any form.

And that’s just the start. Can anyone think of any other examples of privilege experienced by those without auditory processing disorder? I’m totally open to suggestions; feel free to leave them in the comments!