Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: As messaging becomes increasingly salient to social connection and well-being, there exists a gap in understanding and support for neurodivergent users who may struggle with interpreting tone in computer-mediated communication (CMC). We look to existing accessibility practices among neurodivergent communities to thus propose a system of alternative cues that explicitly flag tone and intent, in hopes of better scaffolding neurodiverse communication styles. Through a mixed-method study of conversational pairs (N=18), we assessed the impact of these tone indicators on participants' experiences of synchronous messaging and social connection, interpreting our findings in the context of disability-focused design for messaging interfaces. We found that these alternative cues lowered the overall cognitive load of live tone interpretation for neurodivergent users, enabling a greater sense of confidence and control over self-presentation. In turn, participants reported more positive and in-depth conversations with their partners. We further observed that some participants typed more slowly, wrote longer messages, and used additional communication cues, like emojis and text stylization, concurrently. Participants' use and feedback on this tool also illuminated social context and collaboration's role in cue ambiguity. Our work subsequently suggests future research and design directions on supporting communicative accessibility via the intentional design of alternative cue systems and co-customization.
DOI: 10.1145/3757677
Authors: Amy Wei Xiao, Zainab Iftikhar, Jeff Huang
Institution: Brown University
Language: English
Subfield: Human Factors and Ergonomics
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: National Institutes of Health
Award: G9000001228
OpenAlex ID: W4415250211