When people with autism experience a stressful situation or a panic attack they can easily become overwhelmed by sensory overload.
Sometimes asking them if they need help, or trying to comfort them, can exacerbate this sensitivity and make them feel worse, leading them to become non-verbal.
But we want to help. So how can we if they are too overwhelmed to tell us how?
Well, in response to his own frustrating experiences, Jeroen De Busser, an autistic computer science student, created an amazing app to use in such a situation.
‘Emergency Chat’ is a text-based app which an autistic person can use to communicate when they’re having a panic attack or meltdown. They can show their phone to a friend, a family member or even a stranger, who can scroll through the app to read the personalised messages pre-set for such a situation.
“It has a base text that explains to the person you gave your phone to that you can't use speech and want to use this app to communicate,” Jeroen told Upworthy.
“Both the title and text can be adjusted in the settings to be whatever you want the person you give your phone to to know."
And there’s a chat interface too, for real-time communication, just like texting.
We absolutely love the idea behind this app and applaud Jeroen for an invention that will no doubt help numerous autistic people to communicate when they need it most.
There’s a valuable message here: although not everyone communicates in the same way, everyone wants to communicate, everyone needs to be understood. It’s our job as a society to be flexible on this, and to not assume the only way people can and should communicate is verbally.
