'Anything but the phone!': Communication mode preferences in the autism community.
Offer email or text first when contacting autistic adults—phone calls create needless barriers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hamama et al. (2021) asked 247 autistic adults how they like to talk to people.
They used an online survey.
Half the questions were about strangers. Half were about friends and family.
What they found
For strangers, email won by a mile. Phone calls came last.
For friends, face-to-face and texting tied for first.
The message: unknown contacts feel safer in writing.
How this fits with other research
Sibeoni et al. (2022) backs this up. Their review says autistic sensory life mixes sound, emotion, and social load. Phone calls hit all three at once.
Morris et al. (2020) looks like it clashes. They say you can test social choices with pictures or spoken tasks. But the kids in that study were 5-12 years old. Adults may have stronger written-word skills, so the two studies talk about different age groups.
Hull et al. (2021) adds another layer. Autistic adults want research that respects their choices. Letting them pick email over phone is one small way to show that respect.
Why it matters
Change your first contact. Offer email, text, or chat before you call. You will reach more autistic adults and lower their stress from the very first hello.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
What is already known about the topic?There has been a lot of research into things like how autistic people's communication styles are different to those of non-autistic people, especially among children. This has tended to focus on parent reports and experiments, rather than asking autistic people about their own experiences and preferences regarding communication.What does this article add?This article is the first to ask autistic adults how they prefer to communicate in different scenarios. We asked whether they preferred to use a range of methods, such email, phone calls, letters and live messaging, in scenarios from education to customer services to friends and family. When contacting unknown people or organisations, we found that generally email was preferred, and phone calls were very unpopular. However, for friends, family and people they felt comfortable with, they preferred both face-to-face and written forms of communication (e.g. email and text message).Implications for practice, research or policyThe findings suggest that services should move away from a reliance on phone calls for communication. They should make sure that access to support is not dependent on the phone, and instead offer written options such as email and live messaging which are more accessible. Future research should investigate the impact of COVID-19 on autistic people's communication preferences, as video calling has become much more commonly used and potentially combines benefits and challenges of other modes discussed in this article.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2021 · doi:10.1177/13623613211014995