Untitled

Making AAC images, especially for under-serviced advocacy areas.

[schar-aac]

Website with AAC images (AACIL) here.

Simpler words intro:

I like to draw for AAC . Want good AAC for me and for you . You can interact , whoever you are , because everyone should have access to AAC. You can edit my images for your AAC .

Originally symbol blog. Now symbol and other AAC things like AAC advocacy.

What is AAC?

What recommend for AAC system?

Can I use for Discord Emoji?

More complex words intro:

Hello! I am an AAC user, and I make images to use in AAC. Other people can use any of them for their own AAC, too, including editing them or redrawing them.

Anyone can interact with this blog and the posts on it. However, I may not answer questions or comments about things that are not relevant to AAC, and may not be able to answer others either due to fluctuating disabilities.

Originally symbol blog. Due to AACIL work now taking up self symbol-work capacity (& then some) now symbol and also other AAC things like AAC advocacy.

[schar-aac]

Oceania. Added to countries & regions page.

ID: A green shape of Oceania. End ID.

[schar-aac]

Earthrise. Astronomy page.

ID: A drawing of the famous Earthrise photo. End ID.

[schar-aac]

Wikipedia. Technology page.

ID: The Wikipedia globe logo. End ID.

[dustbunnyaac]

Something that can make life easier is knowing psychiatry is a lot more mushy than people think it is.

Disclaimer: The problems and struggles people face are real. I'm not saying they're not real or that "if you just do yoga it will go away."

Just that. It's a young and evolving science with a lot of messy and abusive power dynamics, and a lot of holes in its net.

Mental illnesses are labels for collections of behaviors. Behaviors are subjective, meaning how you describe or understand them changes depending on who you are and why you're looking and what you're looking for.

A woman might be diagnosed with BPD because the psychiatrist doesn't consider her boyfriend is abusive and thinks (on purpose or without noticing) that she's exaggerating / "hysterical." Two years later she might be diagnosed with PTSD when she sees a new psychiatrist who recognizes her partner's actions as abusive. A year after that, a dissociative disorder, if she learns how to describe her specific experiences with the language of dissociation.

Within psychiatry none of these are wrong, and while after being diagnosed with PTSD her BPD may be seen as a misdiagnosis, there's an equally possible chance she will carry both diagnoses, and that doctors will focus on one or the other depending on their own internal biases and subjective understanding of her.

And then, within all of this, she might find her treatment of DBT was really helpful. Does that mean she has BPD and not PTSD? Does it mean she was better off being diagnosed with BPD? Does it mean all of DBT was equally helpful, and none of it reinforced her partner's abusive behaviors (which is a whole other post)? I don't know, I don't know her and she's made up. All of the answers could be yes, all of the answers could be no, and most likely, it's a mix of both.

Science is evolving constantly. Psychiatry is a young science. The DSM is a useful measuring tool for the DSM and nothing else. If the woman has flashbacks to her abuse, it doesn't matter if she doesn't meet the (current) diagnostic criteria for BPD or PTSD or a dissociative disorder. She still has flashbacks and if she wants to get help for them, she deserves to get help, even if she doesn't meet the definition for any mental illness in the DSM.

New labels will appear, old labels will be discontinued, and basing our understanding of others or ourself around the definitions the DSM creates will make our understanding of the world and other beings more volatile, less nuanced, and less kind.

[cytochrome-sea]

as with most clinically reputable sources about symptoms of severe mental illnesses, every article about catatonia is written from an outsider's perspective.

this is what catatonia it is like for me, on the inside

feeling your muscles tighten at a slow and constant rate that you could not perform on queue. if i get stuck holding something while catatonic, my fingers will eventually dig into it so deeply that it hurts.

i get stuck in awkward positions. legs tucked underneath my body, most of my weight shifted to one side, head tilted, stuff like that. because of your muscles stiffening as well, this becomes uncomfortable in less than ten minutes, and agonizing in 20.

time passes differently. most of my catatonic episodes at this point last for upwards of 2 hours, even with ativan. but the two hours i spend while catatonic feel comparably faster than if i just decided to sit down and stare at nothing for 2 hours. (the "increased speed" does not make it more pleasant and it's not like dissociation i don't think. it's just like, usually at 1.25x speed)

i'm aware of my surroundings i literally just can do fuck all about them.

i cannot focus on anything more complex than a children's cartoon during it. i have tried putting on longer documentaries, but never get anything to stick in my brain. i still prefer longer things to watch or listen to during cataleptic catatonia tho.

my muscles burn during the whole thing from being so tense or not positioned "squarely" i.e. - shoulders hips and neck at a 90 degree angle.

i will be sore and exhausted the next day, which actually makes it more likely for me to become catatonic again.

i never know how long it will be before i can move again. 3 to 4 hours isn't out of the question (note: i feel lucky that its never gotten longer than 4 hours as catatonia can last for days)

the embarrassment. like, there's no shame in experiencing it, i know that. but it doesn't make me stop feeling like i wish i could crawl into a hole, especially when it happens in public. i hate being stared at on the best of days and being so stiff that people have to frog march you everywhere is just , it's so not fun.

screaming for help inside my head (i can't use AAC when i can't move, unless i was able to feel it coming on beforehand and set my switch up)

or, being so embarrassed that i don't want anyone to find me no matter how long it takes for me to come out of it.

when i am "coming out" of it, i slowly start to be able to move lighter body parts first, like fingers and toes, then hands and feet. the last thing i am able to move is my upper legs and torso.

i am basically dead weight during this time, and my body is hard for other people to move as well because of tension in my muscles.

any needing to go to the bathroom? either you hold it, or someone kinda has to frog march you to the toilet, or, you're gonna have to do laundry

it sucks

it doesn't stop sucking until a few days after the fact, because it's physically and emotionally exhausting

obligatory disclaimers that 1. these are only my experiences, don't use them as your only source of information about catatonia 2. my experiences only apply to cataleptic catatonia. i don't have excited catatonia, so i didn't post about it.

if anyone else wants to add their experiences with what catatonia (not freeze responses or autistic inertia, please) feels like from the inside, i would love to also hear about them.

[realsocialskills]

Learning to listen

One of the reasons this blog is called “Real Social Skills” is that the skills needed in order to listen to people with disabilities are not seen as “social skills”. 

Disabled people who communicate in unusual ways are usually seen as having a social skills problem. People who don’t understand what disabled people are saying are *not* usually seen as having a social skills problem. The disabled person is almost always blamed. It doesn’t have to be like this; it’s a problem with our culture; this is something that we can change.

Listening to other people (disabled or not) involves a lot of skills. No one is born knowing how to understand what others are communicating — we all have to learn how to listen. And we’re never done — there is always more to learn about listening and understanding other people. We should all have an expectation that learning skills for listening to people who communicate atypically is part of that. No one is too young or too old to learn to listen. 

For instance, all of these things are listening skills:

Understanding what someone who has a heavy CP accent is saying

Maintaining a conversational rhythm with someone who takes longer than most people to process or express themself

Having a conversation with someone who doesn’t make eye contact, and figuring out alternative ways to tell when they are and aren’t paying attention

Noticing when repetition is communication 

Understanding the indirect communication of people who can only use the limited core vocabulary words available on their communication devices

Giving someone who has been through intense compliance training the space they need to express their own thoughts rather than yours

Paying attention to what someone who speaks oddly is saying rather than writing it off as rude or cute 

Listening to someone who has both communicative and non-communicative speech, and figuring out which words are and aren’t intended as communication

Listening to someone who has both voluntary and involuntary motion, and figuring out which gestures are and aren’t communication

And so on.

No one is born with fully-developed listening skills. Learning to listen effectively is a lifelong process. Learning to listen to people with communication disabilities needs to be part of that.

[blackholemojis]

Ooo! Could you make a husbands, wives, and spouses symbols (having two husbands, wives, spouses) please

Yes I can! Thank you for your patience

Wives: two people highlighted in pink and connected by a purple line, with a pair of interlocking rings above them.

Husbands: two people highlighted in blue and connected by a purple line, with a pair of interlocking rings above them.

Spouses: two people highlighted in green and connected by a purple line, with a pair of interlocking rings above them.

[moveslikekeithrichards]

there is no greater joy on this earth than Making Lists, Categorizing, & Sorting

[d1g1t4l-cr1ppl3]

The whole "disability isn't a barrier, ableism is" always pisses me off because obviously ableism is a barrier and eradicating it would significantly improve the lives of disabled folk, disability does impact peoples lives and prevents them from doing things with or without ableism

[briarpatch-kids]

I thought the same for a very long time until I learned about the person who started that line of thinking and what they truly meant by that. It's a very different way of thinking, but if you realize that the words are defined differently than the "disabled as both identity and impairment" way of thinking it makes more sense. It's also like 40+ years old and we need to keep this in mind. I try not to judge elders for the wording they use to describe their own conditions.

He (Mike Oliver) was severely disabled in the way we think about it, but distinguished a difference between a disability and an impairment. So the impairment would be that I can't walk, the disability part is all the shit that follows: barriers, societal discrimination, cost, all that shit.

The big thing we should be taking away from this is not "fuck you I'll still be disabled even if I'm perfectly accommodated" and more "yeah, its NOT a 'me' problem that I'm blocked out of society. Me and my local community (everyone who lives there) should fix these barriers so I can participate fully and freely."

Anyways, TL:DR, I used to feel the same way until I realized that "disability as an identity" and the "social model of disability" were similar enough once you broke them down to the bare basics.

[briarpatch-kids]

Tags say: have less issues with the social model ITSELF and more with how some people use it.

YES! This is a MOOD for me!! As usual, @cannabisbutch gets it.

[flowercrowncrip]

I went to a talk by Mike Oliver before he died, and it was really interesting.

He way saying that the social model wasn’t intended to be a definition of disability. It was a tool to get politicians/ architects/ society to stop going “it’s a shame disabled people’s bodies stop them being part of society, but I since we can’t fix their bodies there’s nothing we can do 🤷”. And instead get them to do things like build ramps, put braille on packaging, improve health and social care etc.

And they did that by explaining that yes, disabled people’s bodies impact us (and called this impairment), but society’s refusal to include us (‘disability’) is a huge part of being disabled and is actually fixable with better design and policy.

This attempt to shift attention to accessibility and fixing society rather than people was a huge focus of disability rights movement of the time, and Oliver was part of that by introducing those concepts into sociology and academia in general which helped it get taken more seriously in mainstream politics.

[chrome-barkz-aac]

Hello!

Like your blog. No pressure answer public or anonymous, but thought you might like know my blog - is for AAC symbols especially self-advocacy that not drawn/made otherwise. If you need advocacy symbol can ask me, no conditions.

Hello I like your blog too! I was going to ask you for a symbol for battle jacket like the kind that punk wear? hope that is okay I can clarify if you need because not lot of people know what that is. Thank you for ask! You make my day happy.

with love,

chrome

[cytochrome-symbolz]

this was the beginnings of an era lolz. i started drawing aac symbols shortly after so huge shoutout to M forever

[schar-aac]

shoutout to Chrome forever! here's to many more years of working together to expand accessibility for everyone, including ourselves and each other!

[dustbunnyaac]

Tumblr AAC Community & Heavy Tech AAC

This survey is to learn about people who use AAC and Tumblr, and how they use and feel about heavy tech AAC. AAC in can mean many things. T

I made a survey for people who use Tumblr and AAC. It uses simple words to make it easier for people to fill out.

It asks about what kinds of AAC you use, and how you choose it. It asks about if you use heavy tech AAC, and what choices you make when you use it. It asks about if you feel about the Tumblr AAC User community. It also asks some questions about you.

Every section has a description of what is in the section at the start. You can choose to read it if you want to. You do not have to.

It will take 15-20 minutes if you go through all sections of the survey, and read all of the words.

[dustyaacsymbols]

ID: Two drawn AAC symbols. The first is of a black and white figure doing a wheelie in a rigid active wheelchair. The second is the same but colored, with a pale person with a brown mohawk doing a wheelie in a green ultralight rigid chair with rainbow spokes. End ID.

Wheelie, two versions

I made two wheelies are because i felt like the completely anonymous one looked a little weird and also because all my wheelchair symbols are traced pictures i took of me/my own chair so it was simple enough to just make it me.

[schar-aac]

"CPAP mask"

image: a full-face CPAP mask with straps.

[schar-aac]

" presumption of innocence "

image: A yellow figure, a hand on their heart, with a green circle behind them and a white shield in front of and below them. a purple arrow goes from the green circle to the right.

[schar-aac]

" access is love "

image: a pink forearm crutch, a green equals sign, and a pink loveheart.

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

your AAC not have be pretty

it can be

[symbol based AAC] you can add all different symbols drawn cutely n colorfully by small emoji artist or even yourself, replaced every single symbol w them

you not have to. don’t feel pressured do it if you not have energy or it not help you or it make it harder for you use AAC

mine certainly isn’t.

can keep all default symbols it come with. default font. color combo that not aesthetic pretty but help you see better. undecorated. functional first.

your AAC can be “ugly” if it help you

let it be “ugly” if it help you