91av

TO CHAT to Torley Wong is to whirl from one delightfully unrelated topic to the next. Within a few minutes we are discussing the video of him dancing on YouTube, what it is like to be bullied, and his recent joy at finding a clock in precisely the same colours as a watermelon, his favourite fruit.

We are not chatting face-to-face, instead we are typing messages to each other inside the virtual world Second Life. As we type, our animated representatives, or avatars, nod their heads at each other on the screen.

Some might consider this an awkward way to get to know someone, as typing is so much slower than speech and lacks the nuances that can be conveyed via facial expressions and voice. But these qualities are exactly what make avatar-to-avatar chat Wong’s favourite way of communicating.

Wong has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of “high-functioning” autism that causes him to find facial expressions, gestures and body contact highly confusing, even frightening. Communication in Second Life holds no such fears, he types, while his avatar, a pink and green version of Thomas the Tank Engine, stares back at mine. “I often had a difficult time picking up subtle expressions [in the physical world]. But in Second Life expression on the whole tends to be exaggerated and clowny, which makes it easier for people with Asperger’s to pick up on since less is left to interpretation,” he says.

Wong, who is a project manager at Linden Labs in San Francisco, which created Second Life, is not the only person with an autism spectrum disorder who prefers online communication to meeting people in the flesh. In the past few years, people with all forms of ASD – from Asperger’s to the more severe forms, known as “low-functioning” or “classic” autism – have taken to the web, joining virtual worlds, writing blogs and posting videos on websites such as YouTube.

“Of those autistics on the internet who discuss its use, we all agree that it’s an amazing tool,” says Camille Clark of Davis, California, who has Asperger’s and runs a blog called Autism Diva. “That’s because of the way that it allows for a delay in a response that is almost never allowed in real life.”

The web also allows autistic people to interact with others without revealing that they are autistic, she says. “Anyone may have interacted with an autistic person by email or internet bulletin board and not known that the second person is autistic. That makes a big difference for the autistic person.”

Since the 1990s, people with autism have been communicating via chatrooms, email lists and online bulletin boards, including a suite of email lists called “Independent Living on the Autistic Spectrum” created by Martijn Dekker of Groningen in the Netherlands. Dekker has previously likened the internet’s importance to high-functioning autistics to that of sign language for deaf people. “Communicating via the web or by email slows social interaction right down and gives one control over the interaction, compared to live, face-to-face interaction,” says Simon Baron-Cohen, who researches autism at the University of Cambridge.

“Communicating via the web slows social interaction right down and gives you control”

Morphed web

In recent years the web has morphed from a place where a few technically minded people hang out to a mainstream hub of communication. That transformation has given autistic web users a bigger, broader audience for the first time, and a chance to communicate on a level playing field with almost everyone. Applications such as Second Life and YouTube also provide a richer variety of tools than email or typing text onto bulletin boards, including the option to create avatars, and to communicate with people in a way that more closely resembles face-to-face meetings.

In 2005, these advantages spurred John Lester, who was then a neurology researcher at Harvard Medical School, to create a private “island” within Second Life called Brigadoon, designed for people with autism. He had been running an online bulletin board called BrainTalk Communities for patients with a variety of neurological disorders, but believed Second Life would allow people with autism to practice their social and cooperative skills in a “consequence-free place”.

Although at first members remained inside Brigadoon, eventually many began venturing into Second Life proper, to mix with non-autistic people. “Over time everyone just floated away from the island,” he says. Many are now active participants in other communities, including one former Brigadoon member who makes real money selling virtual boats that he builds inside the online world.

Many other people with autism have been attracted to Second Life independently. Wong, for example, uses interactions inside the virtual world to learn more about how to socialise off-line. He buys “gestures” – animations of avatars making faces – and plays them back to himself. “I can observe gestures, and watch them repeatedly, to learn body language,” he says. “It seems very odd off-line to tell someone to keep smiling for me, I want to pick up on that.”

Meanwhile, two autistic women, Amanda Baggs and Laura Tisoncik, have formed “the autistic liberation front” within Second Life, a space where autistic people can “organise, educate and advocate for ourselves”. They sought an alternative to Brigadoon because of its overtly therapeutic aim, says Baggs.

Indeed, not all autistic web users are interested in learning to behave in a more conventional way. Laurent Mottron, an autism researcher and doctor at the University of Montreal in Canada, has noticed quite the opposite. “People with autism are using the web in a totally different way,” he says. “They have a social drive, but the exchange does not go through non-verbal stuff or emotional sharing, what they are interested in is sharing information.”

This is why communication through the web is particularly appealing, he says. “It bypasses all the non-verbal stuff, which they are not interested in.”

One example is Michelle Dawson, an autistic woman who recently joined Mottron as a research collaborator. As well as her own blog, she has also set up online forums where contributors, many of whom have autism, exchange research papers and discuss autism-related issues. “They talk very seriously. They exchange information which is also verified by sources, evidence-based issues,” says Mottron. That is the strength of the web, he says. “It can be used by crazy teenagers to chat, or by autistics to exchange very serious information.”