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Tips for using text chat for meetings and qualitative research with autistic people

Leneh Buckle summarises her experiences of using text chat for focus groups during her PhD and provides tips on how researchers can set up successful text chat meetings with autistic individuals.

Background

Autistic people often find travel to a location such as a university to have a discussion with multiple unknown people particularly daunting. Therefore, when face to face meeting is the only way to participate in or consult on research, we are missing out on potential contributors. Online events, now common due to COVID-19, help with the travel aspect, but in most cases, face to face meetings are being replaced by video meetings and webinars. This has provided new opportunities for disabled people to access social interactions and feel like a part of their communities. However, this may hold its own challenges for some autistic people. For example, even neurotypical people often find video chat stressful and tiring.

The slight delay between speaking and the sound being received at the other end makes conversational turn taking much more difficult. This difficulty may be exaggerated for autistic people, who often find conversational timing challenging even without the added delay.

An alternative that is not often considered is to have online meetings mainly or exclusively in text. Groups of autistic people have been meeting online since before the internet had pictures. Since its inception in 2004, the organisers of Austcape have communicated almost exclusively using text. In the beginning, this was only in the form of an email discussion group for organisers, but beginning in 2007 they have also had monthly text based online board meetings. Based on that experience, when I started doing autism research, I decided to do some of my focus groups in a similar way.

Why hold text-only meetings?

Benefits for autistic participants

  • Less visual clutter like many moving faces.
  • Ability to re-read comments that may have been missed, forgotten, or misunderstood.
  • Time to think, compose a reply, and express thoughts.
  • Less reliance on non-verbal signals. It is easier to focus on the content and avoid errors of ‘reading between the lines’.
  • Avoids problems with timing/interrupting because anyone can type their contribution whenever they want and not worry about finding the right gap.
  • Text is far more tolerant of technical issues. Where video and voice become incomprehensible with glitching, freezing and ‘robot voice’ when signal is poor, text groups can be accessed with very limited and unreliable technology.
  • An error free transcript is created as you go, without time consuming or expensive transcription. Such logs are useful not only for research data analysis, but also for writing minutes of meetings or preparing notes or articles.
  • Some people may have difficulty putting their thoughts into writing due to specific learning disabilities or language impairments. There is also an advantage for those who can type quickly. However, these are similar to the advantages fluent speakers have in typical conversations. Either way, adjustments for access should be considered.
  • Visual overload from trying to keep up. See ‘controlling the rate of the discussion’ below for ideas of how to reduce this.
  • Typing is much slower than speaking, so you need to give more time for each session, and there are lulls in the conversation when one has to wait for others to type. This can give a useful breather, but can be particularly difficult for those who have difficulty suppressing impulses. For meetings where decisions are made, text meetings can also take longer because items that would normally be approved with a nod need an explicit vote.

Benefits for researcher

  • Text is far more tolerant of technical issues. Where video and voice become incomprehensible with glitching, freezing and ‘robot voice’ when signal is poor, text groups can be accessed with very limited and unreliable technology.
  • An error free transcript is created as you go, without time consuming or expensive transcription. Such logs are useful not only for research data analysis, but also for writing minutes of meetings or preparing notes or articles.

Potential difficulties with text

  • Some people may have difficulty putting their thoughts into writing due to specific learning disabilities or language impairments. There is also an advantage for those who can type quickly. However, these are similar to the advantages fluent speakers have in typical conversations. Either way, adjustments for access should be considered.
  • Visual overload from trying to keep up. See ‘controlling the rate of the discussion’ below for ideas of how to reduce this.
  • Typing is much slower than speaking, so you need to give more time for each session, and there are lulls in the conversation when one has to wait for others to type. This can give a useful breather, but can be particularly difficult for those who have difficulty suppressing impulses. For meetings where decisions are made, text meetings can also take longer because items that would normally be approved with a nod need an explicit vote.

I have attended some meetings and events where text is used to supplement speech and video. While this works well for social interaction, it has disadvantages for meetings where you want to hear from everyone, particularly if the participants are on the autistic spectrum.

Video meetings with text support require participants to move flexibly between different modes of communication. While typing, they will often miss what is said, and when the interaction is mainly in voice, those who are contributing in text may be left out. However, any text communication would be an improvement over none. Even if you are using video, encourage the use of text chat as backup in case participants can’t verbalise their thoughts or find the right opportunity to give their input. To fully include them, have someone read out the text chat contributions.

For my research, I chose to have completely separate face to face and text groups.

Setting up a text-only meeting

Choosing a platform

1. Check your chosen platform for visual clutter such as animations and colour.

I have used plain, simple Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for meetings for years, but went for Skype for my focus groups for better security and accessibility. In the chat before we started, someone innocently posted an emoji. What appeared was an enormous moving smiley face that consumed half the screen. The rest of us couldn’t get our eyes off it well enough to concentrate until it had scrolled off due to additional text. Such monstrosities were immediately banned.

Tip: Do not allow large or moving images.


2. Make it easy for participants to find you.

While Autscape has always used the old fashioned Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for its advantages and familiarity to the administrators, it has often been challenging to get less technically able participants connected. This investment may be worth it for repeated meetings, but for one-off or public events, participants may be more willing to use familiar, popular software. Platforms that are designed for video or photos may hide their text capability. It is easier to get participants to a chat that you can invite them directly to your meeting.

Tip: Use a platform that allows you to link directly to the text interface for your specific meeting.


3. Consider not just data security, but privacy and anonymity.

I had a bit of a disagreement with information governance at my university. I wanted to use a platform with a nice clean interface such as Slack, but they wanted me to use something with encryption and suggested WhatsApp. But WhatsApp requires all group members to share their personal phone numbers! We found a compromise in Skype, but I’m not sure it was the best option.

Consider how much control you want over who enters the room and who can talk at one time. Depending on the technical capability, or access to technical expertise, of the person running the group, this may be a limiting factor. A general rule of technology applies: more control requires higher technical competence and more configuration.

Tip: Use a platform that does not require registration of an account.


4. Obtaining transcripts

Ready-made transcripts are one of the big advantages of text meetings. I thought it would just be a matter of copying and pasting the text, but on some platforms you have to select each individual message and then copy them all to a file. This was tedious and error-prone. Also, the reactions which showed agreement were lost during this process. In some chat programmes, logs can be made automatically and timestamped so you can see pauses in the conversation, but you may need to hunt a bit to locate the log file.

Tip: Consider how messages will be copied and kept and try this out beforehand.

 

See the next accordion item for the advantages and disadvantages of common text platforms.

Advantages and disadvantages of common text platforms

Skype

Advantages

  • Easy to find chat area.
  • Easy to get the chat window a usable size for lots of text messages to suit individual processing preferences.
  • Possible to send invitations specifically for the text meeting in advance.
  • No account needed for meetings.
  • Works well on mobile, but that isn’t the best for typing anyway.
  • Encrypted.
  • Can be anonymous.

Disadvantage

  • Moving emojis and colour.
  • If someone doesn’t have an account you can’t directly message them.
  • Getting a transcript of the conversation is painful.
  • Copied messages don’t indicate reaction emojis.

Facebook messenger

Advantages

  • Easy to find messages.
  • Easy to copy messages to file after.
  • Works well on mobile.
  • Can be anonymous, but not usually.
  • Commonly used.

Disadvantages

  • No meeting invite.
  • Often difficult to navigate, especially for live events, and getting the window to a usable size.
  • Need to be friends on Facebook.
  • Concerns about privacy and security.
  • Accounts are associated with a lot of personal information and gives access to that to others.

WhatsApp

Advantages

  • Very easy to find messages and groups.
  • Encrypted connection.
  • Popular.

Disadvantages

  • Can’t invite direct to a meeting.
  • Can’t be used anonymously. Needs a real phone number which is shared with everyone in the group.
  • Need to add everyone as contacts first.

Slack

Advantages

  • Clean interface with an option to make it even simpler.
  • Easy to set up individual and group chats.
  • Can be used anonymously.
  • Security and privacy are good
  • Deleted channel or message is really gone, not held on their servers.

Disadvantage

  • Can’t invite direct to a meeting.
  • Account needed.

Discord

Advantages

  • Lots of control for moderators
  • Ability to force slow down of chat
  • Ability to ban posting of images
  • Custom emoji reactions
  • Two levels of visual clutter to suit different types of processing.

Disadvantages

  • Difficult to find private messages
  • Cluttery interface that can be intimidating
  • Needs to be registered properly to use repeatedly for the same group.
  • Requires some technical competence and time to learn features

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Advantages

  • Very simple interface
  • No images
  • Easily generates log

Disadvantages

  • Requires some technical knowledge to manage specific functions

Zoom

Advantages

  • Easy to use
  • No account needed
  • Easy to obtain transcript

Disadvantages

  • Limited control
  • Text interface is very much secondary to video and can be difficult to access on mobile devices
  • No adjustment for different visual processing needs.

Preparation

After you have chosen your platform, it is time to get your materials ready and try things out. Have a clear agenda of topics or questions, and send these in advance to participants. With my last focus group, having the questions in advance helped participants stay on topic and not answer things I hadn’t asked yet.

Consider your procedure and rules and have a backup plan. Set out the rules or terms of engagement and send these to your participants before the meeting. Offer to meet in advance to test the software with anyone who is unsure. With autistic participants, it may be better to offer a time for them to do this up front rather than expecting them to approach you and ask for help.

Try the whole system, all the way through prior to the first meeting.

Things you might want to test in advance:

  • Setting up a meeting
  • Preparing and sending a link or instructions for joining
  • Following the link or instructions for joining
  • Posting emojis, images and reactions
  • Quoting what someone else has said
  • Obtaining a text record of what was said, with time stamps if wanted

If you’re unsure, try out interacting using your chosen format if possible. Perhaps hold a meeting with a supervisor or colleague by text, or join a Discord server on a topic of interest and use that to gain some familiarity with chatting.

Running a meeting

How a meeting is run depends on the purpose of your meeting and how much discussion you want. I recommend you have a second person who can keep a note of whether any participants go quiet and can be available to chat privately with anyone who becomes distressed or confused or who needs technical help.

Starting

Open the meeting space a bit before the meeting time to give those who like to be on time a chance to get connected and chat a bit.

Be clear when the recorded text starts, and be true to this by not analysing anything said before that point.

Controlling the rate of the discussion

This is likely to be your biggest challenge. You may have to be particularly firm to get heard.

  • Reduce the amount of unnecessary text by encouraging use of ‘reactions’ (e.g. ‘like’ symbols) to agree with others, if available. Don’t ask questions you don’t need to. E.g. ‘is everyone here’? There is little you can do about anyone who doesn’t answer, and the text will still be there for anyone who falls behind.
  • Following the question, let everyone post one comment (if they have one), then move onto a discussion
  • Have a procedure for handling responses to questions or discussion points. One of the advantages of text chat is that it doesn’t matter if everyone answers at once and can promote free discussion; however, it can also lead to an onslaught of text. Calling on one person at a time may make it difficult for some autistic people to respond - or withhold a response. I tried to let the conversation flow, but at times tried to stop the more talkative ones to make a space.
  • Have a method for getting everyone to stop and wait while someone types what they want to say. In Autscape meetings we do this by typing ‘wait’ which pauses the progress of the meeting until that person has sent their message. Participants can continue to write their thoughts but not post them. However, with one of my groups this had no effect at all. I felt like a big friendly stop sign image may have worked better. Find out if there is a way to forcibly stop one person or everyone from sending messages to the group, by ‘muting’ or ‘moderating’ some or everyone. In Discord, it is possible to set ‘slow mode’ so each person can only send one message in a set period (e.g. one minute). I am not aware of any other platforms with this feature.
  • When wrapping up a question, allow ‘one more thing’. Also allow them to follow up by email. This serves two purposes. 1. They are less likely to feel very pressured to ‘get it all out’. 2. They have a way to get rid of what can be obsessive thoughts that occur after the meeting.
  • Tell them when the recorded part of the meeting ends and don’t include anything after that point in your analysis.

Finishing

Be clear whether participants may stay and chat afterwards, and if they may ask for each other’s contact details. I had one group that wanted to start a support group on my research topic

 



Other tips

Provide an overview of the research and reiterate terms of engagement at the start of the meeting as well as a debrief at the end. At the start, I reminded them of the question procedure and guidelines that I sent in the ‘what to expect’ document as well as very briefly, what will be done with their data and the right to withdraw. At the end, I thanked them for their participation (of course) and let them know that they could follow-up with me by email if they thought of things they wished they’d said in the meeting.

If your meeting lasts more than an hour, take a break, even if it’s inconvenient. Be prepared for exhaustion. Chairing a text meeting can be very intensive.