AutSPACEs: a co-created & open-source project to improve environments for sensory processing in autistic people Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Georgia Aitkenhead, Callum Mole, Helen Duncan, Martin Stoffel, David Llewellyn-Jones, Sophia Batchelor, James Scott, Susanna Fantoni, Kirstie Whitaker, the AutSPACEs community ✉bgreshaketzovaras@turing.ac.uk https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutSPACEs Introduction AutSPACEs stands for Autism research into Sensory Processing for Accessible Community Environments. Together with a team of neurodiverse co- researchers and open-source developers, we are using participatory research to co-create an open source, citizen science platform. AutSPACEs will collect rich, qualitative data on how sensory processing differences affect autistic people’s daily lives. 9/10 autistic people experience sensory processing differences compared to non- autistic people, like finding lights brighter, sounds louder. This can lead to everyday spaces such as school, hospitals, public transport and offices being suboptimal, uncomfortable, or totally inaccessible to many autistic people. While autism is not a disability, AutSPACEs is inspired by the disability rights movement social model of disability and motto : “Nothing About Us Without Us” Goals Methods A Diverse Community Next & ongoing steps 1. Last design improvements: - Improve copy, thanks to Autistic writers & editors - Accessible visualizations, thanks to Autistic illustrator 2. Launch of AutSPACEs platform – already got conditional ethics approval 3. Collect data and open to researchers Supporting our community Susanna Fantoni MODERATION DILEMMA STANDARD APPROACH AUTSPACES STRATEGY Instant rewards vs. protecting users from discriminatory or abusive content Post-publication review Pre-publication review to significantly reduce risk Protecting users from triggering content vs. censoring negative experiences Binary moderation options - publish or remove Traffic-lights system with trigger labels that can be filtered Positive feedback vs. risks of negative feedback (or no feedback at all) Anyone can use or comment No comments on posts Scan to listen to Susanna talk about moderation for a podcast: Scan to watch Otis share his personal account of being a citizen scientist: Otis Smith Collaborator Stories Meet-up sessions Monthly newsletters Twitter GitHub support and upskilling Co-working Inclusive facilitation Sharing opportunities Creating inclusive spaces “…it’s not just expert advice, everyone is…coming from their life experience, from their relative’s experience, and they’re saying, ‘it helped someone, I’m sure it would help others’, so I think a project like this is important” Autistic adult and parent to an autistic child Co-design case-studies Moderating the AutSPACEs platform Scan to read our preprint on the moderation approach: Green= Meets all requirements Amber= Doesn’t break CoC but contains potentially triggering content so will be flagged Red= Breaks CoC and will not be approved for public sharing User testing our platform implementation So far, we did two cycles of user testing, with a total of 24 autistic participants (20 new to the project, 4 existing contributors). In response platform improved in many categories, including: - Finding & fixing bugs - Optimizing user flows - Improving digital accessibility (dark mode, sensory requirements) Run task-based user tests Aggregate & anonymise feedback Analyse feedback Prioritise improvements Further develop & improve platform Done by/with larger AutSPACEs community