I’d like to introduce you to Amanda Baggs. She’s a prolific blogger, an avid user of the virtual reality world Second Life, and a popular video blogger on YouTube. She also happens to be severely autistic, and she’ll change the way you think about the role of Web 2.0 in people’s lives.
I was introduced to Amanda a couple of nights ago in a story done by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN. Gupta described Amanda as a “low-functioning autistic†who is unable to speak or even make eye contact with you when you meet her. From the outside, she seems very disabled and incommunicative. But all of that changes when you hand her a computer keyboard.
Amanda can type 120 words a minute, and she puts her skills to use on her blog, Ballastexistenz. If you’re expecting someone who writes in the style of Rainman, let me give you a taste of her writing style, as she explains the name of her blog:
(The rest of the note).
Thanks to this post by Jim Gates.