Academic Journal Article (Autism, Sensory Experience and Public-Space Accessibility).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10726197/
After researching sensory accessibility within airports, I wanted to understand the wider sensory experiences that may affect autistic adults when using public spaces.
Airports do not exist in isolation. International travel also involves public transport, stations, shops, restaurants, city centres and unfamiliar public spaces. I therefore felt it was important to investigate how autistic adults experience these environments more generally before deciding that airports are the only relevant focus for my project.
I chose this paper because it centres the direct experiences of autistic adults. The researchers used seven online focus groups involving 24 autistic adults and examined which public spaces participants experienced as enabling or disabling. The study was participatory, with autistic people involved in the research team and in reviewing the interpretation of the findings.
The paper is also particularly relevant following Ben’s suggestion that I research the difficulty of expressing an experience. It not only discusses sensory triggers. It explores how sensory experience interacts with communication, predictability, other people’s understanding, the availability of adjustments and the ability to recover.
One of the first things that stood out to me was the description of sensory experience as a “spider web of things.”
This suggests that sensory overwhelm is not always caused by one obvious trigger. It can result from several interconnected factors building up at the same time.
A space may contain: