08/07/2026
Being human means being able to express oneself with or without words.
Its a shame how non-speaking autistics are judged as less, while, perfectly verbal non-autistics who go into silence because they can't find words (due to trauma, grief, abuse etc) are met with immense empathy,embraced and accommodated for.
Hari's research will be the wake up call needed to create an inclusive, compassionate world for ALL.
For years, experts called Hari Srinivasan “low-functioning.”
He lost his speech before he was two. He was diagnosed autistic at three. And because he couldn’t talk, people assumed there wasn’t much going on underneath.
They were wrong. Hari understood everything. He always had. He just had no way to show it, until he was 12 and learned to type. Typing gave him a voice.
Today Hari is a neuroscientist and PhD candidate at Vanderbilt, studying the sensory world he has lived inside his whole life. He is minimally speaking and communicates by typing, often one finger at a time. He is also multilingual, a published poet, and co-authored a foreword with Temple Grandin.
The boy they underestimated is now doing the research that will help scientists understand people just like him.
In his own words: “I, too, am human.”
Sources: UNESCO, KALW
