A conversation with a friend who stayed with me
Before this module had even started, I was talking to my friend Ellie, who is autistic and had recently been travelling for the first time. She told me about a particularly difficult experience she had had while travelling independently. I wasn’t looking for a project topic at the time, but the conversation stayed with me.
When I later began the module and mapped out the subjects I was naturally interested in, I noticed that travel and accessibility repeatedly appeared across my previous work and interests. That made me think again about Ellie’s experience and question why it had resonated with me so strongly.
Realising why I cared about this problem
Thinking about Ellie also made me think about my sister. I remembered travelling together, conversations we had had about travel, FaceTime calls while I had been away and some of the difficulties she has experienced in environments that I find relatively manageable.
I also thought about how important independent travel has been in my own life and how sad it felt to realise that some of those experiences might be considerably harder for us to share. This was the point where travel, autism and accessibility stopped feeling like three separate interests and started feeling like the area I genuinely wanted to investigate.
From neurodiversity and travel to the live airport journey
The project began much more broadly around travel and neurodiversity. As the research developed, I gradually narrowed this to autistic adults and independent international travel, and then more specifically to autistic adults travelling independently through airports.
This narrowing was important because it gave me a much clearer environment to investigate. Airports contain many of the things that were beginning to emerge within the research: sensory intensity, unfamiliar processes, time pressure, crowds, communication demands and unpredictability.
The question changed from “what is missing?” to “why does it still break down?”
My first major research stage looked at the barriers autistic passengers experience and what airports already provide. I found Hidden Disabilities Sunflower schemes, assistance services, sensory and quiet spaces, Social Stories, maps, familiarisation programmes, staff support and accessibility information.
Initially, I was looking for something that airports simply were not doing. Instead, I realised that a surprising amount of support already exists and people are still experiencing significant difficulties. So, where does the passenger experience break down despite all of these existing interventions?
Support does not automatically reduce independence
My research into what autistic adults actually want from travel began to challenge the way I was using the word “independent”. Independence could easily be interpreted as travelling without asking anybody for help. However, both my secondary and primary research suggested something much more complicated.
Autistic adults repeatedly valued choice, autonomy and control over the support they receive. Support can actually enable somebody to remain independent if they are able to decide when, how and whether they use it. One of the clearest ideas to emerge from this stage was Support is not the opposite of independence.