autism and blind people

Post Reply New Topic

I was offert a job (not sure if I get it) to help a blind student with daily live approx. 5 hours per week.
I'm a student myself and thought this might be a good oppurtunity.

So I was wonderung is the communication for an autistic person with blind people easier or more difficult than with normal NTs?

Easier, from my point of view

Probably easier. He won't see your body moving in a strange way or observe any signals that don't make sense or don't translate well for NTs, so your use of language as a way of transmitting information will have more importance. Mind your tone of voice however, as we are often not very good at using it appropriately.

Yes, I think it's easier. You are communicating on one channel--auditory--and you don't have to worry about anything else. Plus, they have a disability too, and that means some common experiences. They will be more used to communicating with people who don't think quite like they do and so should have less trouble than most NTs in getting across to you.

Yes, and there are some commonalities with visual blindness and 'mindblindness.' Interestingly, the Culture of the Deaf has many sociocultural in common with the autism/AS community! We tend to interact in parallel ways. Any sensory disorder (i.e. blindness, deafness) will have overlap with autism/AS.

I think that would be a great opportunity for you. In fact, apart from the job experience, you might make a new friend. Oh, in that Temple Grandin film, Temple's good friend was blind. Curious in that some blind children have behavioural features shared by autistic children.

Yes we wrote emails together and she seems very nice and she also has a guide dog and has send me a picture.
I'll meet her in the middle of next month and she is looking for someone for next semester.

She is blind, since she is 10 years old, because of a brain tumor she had back than.

I never had to do much with blind people. But I think it could be really nice and for both an experience.
Well, she still needs to say "yes".

Good luck Raziel, I hope you get the job, it sounds like a good thing.

That sounds like a really good opportunity.

I agree with the others that communication should be easier than with a lot of NTs. I think that things like tone of voice and inflection might have more importance though.

I have done a little work with blind people. I would say, based on the aspie mindsets I know (like myself) working with blind people is much more intuitive than for NT's.

We analyse details a lot more and when actually latching onto a task, really sink into it and think about it deeply. I find teaching to anyone very easy, if I learn how to do something I can make anyone understand it. I think these skills have a lot to do with aspie traits, even if it is because we find it more challenging to understand our environments and learn particular things, so we go on a greater deeper analytical journey developing nuanced understanding of how to do things, and can convey deconstructed information accordingly.

I have a lot of blind friends. I've always gotten along great with blind people/

If he's congenitally blind, there's a good chance he'll have autistic traits too. Being blind from infancy seems to be associated with a higher probability of autistic traits.