How to get people to accommodate auditory issues?

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Isa e Pally
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09 Jun 2024, 3:57 pm

So, I hear a lot “you don’t look autistic”, and even when people believe I am autistic, they tend to ignore my needs for accommodations. I am a young researcher and I work at university, and I have auditory processing issues which make it impossible for me to follow oral academic discussions. I can follow normal conversation though (except for word spellings), so I guess that’s why people don’t take me seriously. I have asked multiple times to people to write formulas at the blackboard while they talk, but they just don’t do it: they keep talking and talking and for me it is as if they spoke a different language.
The best solution I came up with, is to record our conversations, but it is not optimal as listening them afterwards and rewinding them is very time consuming.
Also, I don’t manage to just show how lost I am during the discussion, as I feel that people wouldn’t believe/understand it, hence they would just think I am dumb. So people just believe I am following. I wouldn’t even know how to show my distress, and anyway they wouldn’t take me seriously, or they would just get annoyed (and there is a power imbalance between senior professors and a young researcher).
Any idea on how to solve this issue?



IsabellaLinton
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09 Jun 2024, 6:01 pm

Can you use speech-to-text software so their words are translated into written form?

Another suggestion is to be tested for audiovisual processing delay and get an accommodation.
That's a lot more labour-intensive to do though.


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Last edited by IsabellaLinton on 09 Jun 2024, 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MoeTrashPanda
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09 Jun 2024, 6:10 pm

That's so invalidating!! ! That's so rude that they are unwilling to make small changes to their teaching styles. I'm sorry you have to go through that!

Along with what Isabella said about seeking testing/software to help, I think you unfortunately may need to continuously advocating for your needs (which is tiring and sad that you have to keep asking for reasonable accommodation!). Good luck ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ. I hope they start listening to you soon!


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MatchboxVagabond
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13 Jun 2024, 10:28 am

Isa e Pally wrote:
So, I hear a lot “you don’t look autistic”, and even when people believe I am autistic, they tend to ignore my needs for accommodations. I am a young researcher and I work at university, and I have auditory processing issues which make it impossible for me to follow oral academic discussions. I can follow normal conversation though (except for word spellings), so I guess that’s why people don’t take me seriously. I have asked multiple times to people to write formulas at the blackboard while they talk, but they just don’t do it: they keep talking and talking and for me it is as if they spoke a different language.
The best solution I came up with, is to record our conversations, but it is not optimal as listening them afterwards and rewinding them is very time consuming.
Also, I don’t manage to just show how lost I am during the discussion, as I feel that people wouldn’t believe/understand it, hence they would just think I am dumb. So people just believe I am following. I wouldn’t even know how to show my distress, and anyway they wouldn’t take me seriously, or they would just get annoyed (and there is a power imbalance between senior professors and a young researcher).
Any idea on how to solve this issue?

Whisper.ai can be used to create both a text record as well as a transcript of any recordings you do. I like doing both because the transcript will tell me where in the recording the bit I'm reading was located, so that I can just skip to that bit if the transcript looks weird or I really need to guarantee that it's precise.