1 in 5 people in the United States are neurodivergent. Due to the nature of neurodivergence and the spectrum of experiences, there is a wide range of challenges at differing levels, which makes empowering and supporting these communities difficult—but to promote equity, we must bridge these gaps. As a whole, neurodivergent individuals are some of the most discriminated against people in America, despite many of them being fully self-sufficient and productive members of society. One of the main reasons that many are discriminated against is because they struggle to communicate, especially through a neurotypical lens, which dominates society and casts many neurodivergent people as “Other.”

Many neurodivergent individuals frequently struggle to pick up on social cues or understand complex instructions, which leaves them feeling helpless, lost, and scared. These feelings, along with the bullying that comes with struggling to communicate and considerable public ridicule, often drive neurodivergent people to contemplate or attempt suicide. They have a suicide rate nine times over the national average. 66%+ of neurodivergent adults have considered suicide.

I have a friend who is neurodiverse, and seeing them struggle to communicate breaks my heart, so I decided to do something about it and use my platform to help others.

The evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, specifically human-computer interaction (HCI), as well as the field of computational linguistics, has intrigued me. I wondered if the power of AI could be used to aid the neurodiverse community with communication, and it turns out that it can. Whether through tone detection, text/speech simplification, or simple text-to-speech, we have the technology to greatly improve the quality of life of neurodiverse peoples everywhere – and I founded LinguaLink to do just that.