The problem is when there is a “facilitator” taking a physical role with their arm. It confuses the issue in the public eye, too, where the average person probably isn’t familiar with the various types of AAC available, like pointing to pictures or letters, or typing independently, or using a computer where a program with eye tracking is the means to communicate, and there’s other legit stuff too. So even someone who knows enough to know FC doesn’t work, may misinterpret a legit communication method for being a scam because they’re inclined to think that someone behaving in odd ways like autistic people frequently do can’t really communicate.

I can certainly believe a non-speaking autistic person could learn to read by themselves, even advanced words provided they had a place to learn them from, but typing or whatever method is used wouldn’t happen suddenly, and out of those capable of learning to read or type, most would need a good deal of assistance beyond simply being read to and seeing words around the house, since that is the case for most children without disabilities. Considering that autism typically involves a great deal of language difficulties, especially in the non-verbal population, I would think that even highly intelligent autistic people would learn to read independently with such little assistance at a lower rate than comparably intelligent non-autistic people.

Especially when there’s a keyboard involved – even an intelligent, neurotypical adult who can read and write at a college level (if they’d never been around keyboards much) would need time to study, practice, and learn where the keys are. And someone typing one finger at a time, without looking at the screen, would need an excellent memory of the keyboard layout, and particularly that specific keyboard – to be able to determine the distances between various keys without looking would require extreme precision of movement beyond memorizing the layout, and I doubt that holding someone’s elbow would take them from unable to type independently to having that degree of motor precision.

That’s without even getting into all the research that demonstrates the “assisted” person is unable to correctly identify a given object if the “facilitator” is unable to see it, even when they were able to identify correctly when the facillitators could see. I can’t think of a more clear-cut demonstration that it isn’t the disabled person isn’t the one communicating. Now, while it doesn’t make sense on an intuitive level and the research shows it doesn’t work, there could turn out to be a situation where it actually works, probably involving some kind of specific physical problem that isn’t inherent to autism. If that is the case, rigorous testing (I believe there is an offer to test from Randi) would bear it out, and scientists could study the mechanism and so forth.

But unless a particular case is rigorously verified (no soft-tests that seem to settle the matter but are highly vulnerable to biases affecting results; this is the reason we came up with double-blind testing), it is completely unethical to take or continue the part of a facilitator, and if I were currently a facilitator just stumbling onto the research, I would go and test whether it was working that time or stop, since there hasn’t been a single case yet. When the evidence is weighed so clearly on one side, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the conclusion that a facilitator is falsely speaking for the disabled individual, which is a grave insult to their dignity as a human being. Disabilities don’t demean humans; it’s this sort of chicanery that demeans humans.

I read everything around me from books to TV credits to the newspaper on the kitchen table but I had no one to share my ideas with so I just retreated into my own imaginary world.

If he needs help to simply type, how on earth would he be picking up and reading books containg words like ‘anxiety’ and ‘despair’?

This is utterly convincing. I have seen the light.
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I have invited several autistics to comment here. In the meantime, readers may wish to:

Watch the Loving Lampposts segment on Sharisa Kochmeister.

Read Amy Sequenzia’s article, Non-Speaking, Low Functioning. Ms. Sequenzia does not speak.

The individuals who starred in Wretches and Jabberers may be victims (and I use that word deliberately) of Facilitated Communication, as Kim Wombles notes in her review.

However, Wombles makes two important distinctions:

I must remind readers that I am not talking about the routine hand-over–hand initial teaching we usually engage in with our children, where supports are gradually removed as the child masters the skill sets being worked on. In facilitated communication, there is no learning curve: communication is instantaneous and advanced and believed to be the communication of the disabled individual alone.

Nor am I talking about individuals who type independently.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=107417

This case is not so clear cut to me.I am somewhat skeptical.

I cannot see where any cheating is going on.

It is quite possible that this girl has only sensory and motor impairment, not intellectual impairment.
It seems that, in the past, her lack of ability to communicate increased her behavioural and motor problems, which made her disability seem much worse than it actually is, and that these have improved with her new found ability to communicate via a keyboard.
Notice also how she developed these skills over a period of time, not virtually overnight like the victims of FC. The content of her communications also seem to be age appropriate. And it must also have helped that she has, at all times, remained in the family home with attentive, concerned parents, and that she has a twin sister.
So I think the scenario depicted in this video is at least plausible.

I’m not Steven Novella though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNZVV4Ciccg&feature=youtu.be