owlsbeast

[owlsbeast]

growing up in constant pain that you're never believed about (or treated properly) really fucks with your baseline perception of what "feelings in my body i should be doing something about" is

like. constant neck pain for whats around eight years now. went to see a doctor about two years in, did physical therapy that didn't work, they went "well that sucks" and sorta just brushed me off.

and i was like sixteen, what was i going to do? ask my parents to see a different doctor? i didn't even know i could do that! i just believed there was nothing that could be done about it, and well. just gotta suck it up for the rest of my life i guess.

otc pain meds never helped much and i didnt want to take them every single day, so i just didnt. not for the neck pain... or any other kind of pain. muscles hurt somewhere else on my body? im already dealing with the neck pain, so just have to deal with this too.

and then it extends to not just physical pain, but every other kind of discomfort i could possibly be feeling. a little too dehydrated and there's an electrolyte drink in the fridge, but i dont drink it. really annoying pimple on my face and there's acne patches but im not gonna use any.

then of course i never learned how to properly gauge my body's limits. the ache of a muscle that means i should stop and rest is nothing compared to the neck pain, so i just keep going and overexert myself, which leads to more pain that i still don't do anything about.

whats the point when im already in constant pain anyway? after all, ive learned i just have to suck it up.

[owlsbeast]

i definitely dont have arfid. i just avoid and restrict my food intake in a disordered way

[owlsbeast]

I took my little brother (autistic, mostly non verbal) out and he was using his voice keyboard to tell me something, and this little boy (maybe 4 or 5?) heard him and asked me "Is he a robot??" I tried to explain to him that no, he isn't a robot, he just communicates differently, but my darling brother was in the background max volume "I am robot I am robot I am robot I am robot"

[owlsbeast]

in the perfect world i would be able to get paid to help people move and put all their things into boxes and label the boxes and Sort and Organize and Be Autistic About Grouping Things Together

unfortunately. the disability,

[owlsbeast]

for $50 a year i thought that fig app would be able to tell me if the "spices" in the ingredients actually contains the spice im allergic to, but it just gives a maybe if it sees "spices" at all.

i already check the ingredients on the box myself. i dont need an app for that. stupid.

[owlsbeast]

"The gap between high-functioning and low-functioning Autistic people is too wide. This is why they need to be two separate diagnoses."

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

THERE IS NO GAP, THERE ARE PEOPLE THERE!

MSN Autistic people exist. Separating the spectrum is to leave us behind. Stop forgetting about us.

[owlsbeast]

feeling smugly "i told you so" at our doctor, who seemed very set on our muscle issues just being deconditioning (despite me explaining that it. probably is not) and was like "im going to order some bloodwork for immune disorders but i hope it comes back normal :( id hate for you to have another thing :( you have too many things, you're so young :("

meanwhile im sitting there thinking "i already know we have another thing. just let me find out which thing with the minimal amount of tests please."

the bloodwork came back abnormal 🎉

[owlsbeast]

the bloodwork came back abnormal 🎉

[owlsbeast]

this is why they need to invent robots you can put your consciousness into. let me do that. and then i can put dragon wings on it

maybe not in this current society though because itll probably end up being an iphone situation where you're like, forced to buy a new one every year or get stuck with a robot body that sucks

they should invent a body that doesnt get nauseous

[owlsbeast]

they should invent a body that doesnt get nauseous

[owlsbeast]

in system relationships are really awesome but also really overwhelming bc i dont feel just my love for my boyfriend but also his love for me at the same time and its like a giant feedback loop of love that makes us feel like exploding into heart shaped confetti

[owlsbeast]

maybe we need to take this song off our "whole system vibe time" playlist because so far its had a 100% success rate at pulling two boyfriends to the fronting space so they can dance together. which is cute. but not what we want when we want music time as one singular being

[owlsbeast]

want to show some of the vocabulary & page sets available on on the avaz aac app.

also want to talk about why we picked the options we did, and what changes we had to make for organization, for those who are new to aac or trying to figure out how to make their pages better work for them.

avaz lets you fully preview each of their two pre-made vocabularies at each grid size, without interfering with what you actually use. so if you want to see any other screens, send us an ask!

avaz has two pre-made vocabulary sets, avaz classic and avaz step up.

classic is a smaller word set, with grid sizes from 3x5 to 5x8 buttons. this is what the default home page looks like for the 5x8 grid:

5x8 is the largest grid that we can handle. any more buttons and we get overwhelmed or are unable to process any of the options. so this is the one we picked.

however, this was a little too disorganized for us. we like folders being on the bottom & right sides of a home page. and some of the word placements didn't make sense (why is "to" so separated from "if" when they're both "short words" ?)

so this is our home page:

all the folders are neatly on the sides, close to relevant words. (pronouns & people are right underneath the yellow column of pronouns, not one row over like the default.)

while avaz classic had better default organization & words than some other apps we've seen, we still had to rearrange some pages because they were too overwhelming for us to process.

for example, the default "time" folder on the 5x8 grid:

if there isn't a separation by differently colored buttons, a full page of buttons makes it really hard to find the word we want. especially when a lot of these have the same clock icon with little differences.

here is what we arranged it to by ourself, though it still needs some work.

we added gaps and organized things into columns. we put some of the words into more folders to give them more space. we also added seasons buttons from "weather" here to "time" because we associate seasons more with "time of the year" than weather.

avaz step up has more vocabulary, including core words that aren't present in classic at all and must be added manually.

this is the home page for the largest grid possible, 9 by 13 buttons:

step up has the feature of a "frozen" row along the bottom for important folders, that stays on screen all the time.

for example, if you go into the "short words" folder, the bottom row of folders is still there.

this is the same for all the grid sizes with this vocabulary, down to the smallest step up size of 6 by 10.

we hope these previews were helpful to anyone looking into using avaz or aac in general. we're happy to answer any questions or show other pages that are requested through our ask box :)!

[owlsbeast]

when wake up , almost never have words .

no voice, no can think in good words . need aac or write in messy words .

never know when will get words back . can be minutes . sometimes is hours .

not always have to do with brain waking up . feel really wake now . but words ? gone !

[owlsbeast]

its a little silly that im the only one in the system that feels really "human" but im the one with the most dysphoria

[owlsbeast]

they should invent a headache that goes away

[owlsbeast]

high tech AAC Research and Review

pt, high tech aac research and review

hi folks! i figured there oughta be like a database of what actual AAC users (not just SLPs!!) think about the programs they use!

my goal with this survey is to find out the pros and cons of each high tech AAC program and why AAC users picked their programs, so that other AAC users can make informed decisions about which program they want to use.

if you want to participate in this kind of research, please use the form below:

i have tried to put this into plain language but if anything is inaccessible or unclear, please let me know. i want this to be for the community!!