The guide can also use gestures for “visual learners.” Tearing up paper works, Mukhopadhyay said, as both an auditory and visual prompt. The interlocutor then writes the two possible answers on separate pieces of paper, tapping the choices while reading and spelling them aloud and then “encourages the student to pick up the correct answer.” If they are “auditory learners,” they might not look or read the answers, but instead rely on the tapping to “hear” the position of the correct answer. What did I say? Does a square have 4 sides, or 3 sides?” It works like this: the communication partner, or interlocutor, begins with a few sentences on a subject and then asks a related question: RPM is based on what’s called a Teach-Ask paradigm, explains the FAQ page of Helping Autism through Learning and Outreach ( HALO), the organization that Mukhopadhyay joined in 2005. RPM was developed in the early 1990s by Soma Mukhopadhyay, the mother of an autistic child, who, like about one-third of individuals diagnosed with autism, was nonverbal. “It is regrettable that this pseudo-scientific method was featured in an Apple promotional video and received worldwide viewing.”Ĭoncern over the RPM system hinges on how it works, and questions remain surrounding whether the method facilitates real first-person communication, or creates dependence on outside cues and interference from a user’s communication partner. He adds that it is not supported by research and that its underlying theory is “nonsensical.”
“It is regrettable that this pseudo-scientific method was featured in an Apple promotional video and received worldwide viewing,” says Howard Shane, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Autism Language Program and the Center for Communication Enhancement at Boston Children’s Hospital.
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The there was a follow-up video that also featured RPM, a nomination for a 2017 Webby Award and a series of other Accessibility videos. It was featured on the Today Show, highlighted by Mashable, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Forbes, Metro UK, and shared across disability and autism blogs. It has reached 4.4 million YouTube views. A single tweet about the video, which does not explicitly discuss RPM, generated over 230 million impressions. Over the next year, Dillan’s Voice generated significant buzz. Michelle Dawson, an autistic researcher, called it “bad science and bad ethics.” The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) says that “RPM is a technique without any research support.” RPM has been labeled pseudoscientific, unethical, and inhumane. Individuals are using iPads and third-party apps and devices to make themselves heard, from Sady Paulson directing and editing features using Switch Control on her Mac, to Charlie, aged six, saying “mommy” for the first time using Proloquo2Go on his iPad.īut there was something different about this Apple video: in it, the teen uses Rapid Prompting Method, or RPM, a form of communication that depends on a “facilitator” or “communication partner” standing close by, providing continuous physical and verbal cues. Recent years have seen groundbreaking advances in the assistive technology sphere. I can finally speak with the people that love me.”ĭillan’s Voice features something called “assistive technology”: devices and systems that maintain, increase, or improve the functional capabilities of those with differences and disabilities - including voice recognition software, screen readers, adaptive keyboards, and eye tracking devices. “The iPad helps me see not only my words, but to hold onto my thoughts. But now you can hear me,” a voiceover reads. “All my life I wanted so badly to connect with people, but they could not understand because I could not communicate. We hear enthusiastic applause, resounding cheers, the video fades to the Apple logo. “We are the reality of our thinking lives,” he tells the audience, urging them to open their minds. Then, we move to his middle school graduation ceremony as he steps confidently up to the podium, award medals around his neck. We watch him going for a run as the sun rises, doing pull-ups at the gym, walking alone along a school corridor, his hands flapping, humming occasionally, but it’s a life lived mainly through silence.
Before he had the iPad, he says in the video’s voiceover, people thought he didn’t have a mind, that he wasn’t in control. As part of 2016’s Autism Acceptance Month, Apple released an uplifting video called Dillan’s Voice, in which a nonverbal teenager delivers a speech at his graduation, his text turning swiftly to spoken word through his iPad.
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