I am currently writing this blog post in Google Docs using its integrated voice typing. I hit ⌘+Shift+S and say “comma and then the text appears”, and then the text appears. To be honest, I use voice typing to write all of the posts in my blog, and without it, they would be impossible. In this blog post, I want to describe my experience of being neurodiverse. I also want to talk about the two things that have helped me the most: people and technology.

More than just a disability

In 2005 I was diagnosed with the disability “developmental prosopagnosia” by neurologists at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Also called “face-blindness”, it is a disorder that affects perception and memory and prevents me from remembering people’s names and recognizing their faces. In one test I completed, I was significantly better remembering a series of faces when they were turned upside down rather than right side up. An upside-down face is just an object to be remembered like everything else, but in the correct orientation, it gets filed away in a special part of memory, a part of memory that I lack.

In my case, things get worse. I can’t remember how to spell words. A spelling test I took in my senior year of high school measured my spelling level at “3rd grade”. I can’t memorize the way buildings are laid out, or the dates of historic events, or even mathematical axioms.

There have been times in my life when I defined myself based only on the deficits described above. I focused so much on what I lacked, I forgot what I had. But in those moments I was dishonest.

I am incredibly good at understanding processes. I may have lost the “what”, but I am blessed with the “why” and the “how”. I can write complex mathematical proofs that show the underlying meaning of equations. I can imagine how a soldier felt going into a war. I can understand why an author might use a river as a metaphor for life. Hopefully, I can write a good blog post too.

What I mean by the phrase “more than just a disability” is that I define my difference from others not just by what I am lacking, but also by what I have. When I was young, psychologists described me as having splinter skills, incredible strengths in some areas, and profound weaknesses in other areas. If I could graph my abilities, instead of forming a nice bell curve, they would form sharp spikes in places like writing essays, and deep V’s in related places like spelling.

People

My favorite part of life is interacting with other people. In fact, these interactions have been my most powerful tool for succeeding with my unique psychology. When I collaborate with others, each of our strengths makes up for the other’s weaknesses. Because of this, I put a major emphasis in my life on receiving help and asking questions and, in turn, helping others and encouraging them to ask questions.

In middle and high school I received lots of aid from my teachers. They were flexible about accommodations for tests and helped me learn the names of my peers. In order to receive this help, however, I had to learn to ask for it. I advocated for myself with each of my teachers and school leaders to help them understand my unique disability.

College changed things. Again I made use of the disability department and advocated for myself to professors. But now I could find support from other students. My favorite memories were staying up late working on savagely hard math problems with my friends. They helped me remember the various axioms and fundamental laws of mathematics, and I helped them put it together into a proof. There is a very unique joy in productive teamwork, and I find it intoxicating.

I remember having a supremely strict math teacher for my honors calculus 4 class who pushed the class way too hard without providing any kind of empathy or emotional support. This caused a lot of pain, especially after most of the class failed the midterm. As a result, I took three immediate actions.

First I went to every single office hour he had available to ask questions. I had a policy of continuing to ask until I fully understood every aspect of the topic we were studying that week.

Second, I set up an every-other-day study group with my friends. This let us get through the ridiculous homework load in an enjoyable manner, and I was able to both provide a lot of help and receive help with the material. It was at this point I realized just how well you understand things when you teach them to others.

Finally, I talked to the professor on the class’s behalf, using my connection from the office hours and my experience of advocating for myself with professors. It turns out that he actually believed that “you have a fundamental misunderstanding of linear algebra” was a positive and supportive message.

My friends and I passed the class with much better grades than we received on the midterm. Getting through that class was the most exciting part of my college career, and it made me realize that interacting with others was my favorite part of life.

Assistive technology

My first interaction with assistive technology was in middle school. My teachers realized that my inability to spell made my essays unreadable so they helped me learn to use Dragon Naturally Speaking. Using this voice dictation program, I could simply speak my essays out loud and they would be typed into Microsoft Word without any spelling errors. Dragon Naturally Speaking did make some grammatical errors, but it was the only voice dictation program on the market. It enabled me to finally express my ideas without being held back, and I successfully graduated from high school with straight A’s, taking many advanced classes.

In college, my work became much more difficult, but assistive technologies advanced to meet my needs. For example, mathematical formulas in my calculus classes could easily be written on paper, but then I was unable to write a text description of my work. On the other hand, I could dictate the text into a Word document but I couldn’t type in the equations efficiently. This is where the Microsoft Surface changed everything. Using my Surface, I could switch instantaneously from writing equations directly onto a Word document using my pen to dictating descriptive text using Dragon Naturally Speaking. I could now write a comprehensive mathematical proof easily.

My work in computer science presented another challenge: programming without spelling words. Again assistive technologies had advanced to match my needs. Computers now had dictation built right into the operating system. This meant I could dictate code comments directly into my integrated developer environment (rather than being restricted to Microsoft Word). This, along with autocompletion, integrated spell checking, and the powerful text manipulation functionality of Vim keybindings allowed me to program freely. As a result, I was able to succeed in my classes, in an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates, and in a summer internship at 1010data in New York City.

Conclusion

People and technology in my life have turned my differences into my strengths. I honestly can’t wait to collaborate with more people as my career grows. Likewise, I’m excited about the new accessibility technology around the corner. Now if I could only I could get Google’s voice to text to work in Vim… 🎤