This story originally appeared in The Epoch Times.
By Jeff Louderback
“Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine,” Elizabeth Bonker said to conclude her graduation speech at Rollins College in Florida in 2022, referencing a quote from Alan Turing, a British mathematician who helped break Nazi encryption codes in World War II.
The address drew a standing ovation and then went viral on social media. The published author, poet, and lyricist became a highly sought-after public speaker—even though she doesn’t say a word vocally.
Bonker has a form of autism that has kept her from speaking since she was 15 months old.
She communicates through a keyboard-to-speech computer program. She types her words one letter at a time.
The computer converts the message into a clear female voice.
When she speaks in public, she is often accompanied by her mother, Ginnie Breen, who holds an iPad for her to type on.
The method is designed to help people with autism who have limited or no verbal abilities communicate. Multiple companies in the space provide nonspeakers with a way to express their feelings, needs, and thoughts through spelling using a letter board or keyboard.
“Learning to type to communicate changed my life from hopeless to hopeful,” Bonker told The Epoch Times.
Autism, or autism spectrum disorder, refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication, according to Autism Speaks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the prevalence of autism has increased to one in 31 children, up from one in 150 children in 2002 and one in 10,000 in the early 1990s.
An estimated 30 percent of people with autism are nonspeaking, yet only a small fraction of nonspeakers have been taught how to communicate.
Nonspeakers with autism include people who speak unreliably or say the same word or phrase repeatedly.
People with nonspeaking autism typically have trouble with their fine motor skills, according to J.B. Handley, an autism advocate who has written two books on the condition. One of the titles is “Underestimated: An Autism Miracle,” in which Handley and his son, Jamie, tell the story of the latter’s journey to find a method of communication that allowed him to emerge from his self-described “prison of silence.”
The book inspired the 2023 documentary “Spellers,” which chronicles the lives of eight children who are nonspeakers with autism. Handley produced the film and appears in it with Jamie. Bonker is also featured.
The book and film challenge assumptions from experts who have long claimed that nonspeakers with autism are cognitively disabled.
In “Spellers,” Handley asks: “What if they’ve been wrong about every single one of them? What if they’re all walking around without the ability to speak, but brilliant, or at least cognitively normal?”
Bonker told The Epoch Times: “The world needs to change the way it sees nonspeaking autism. It’s a neuromotor disorder, not a cognitive one. My neuromotor issues also prevent me from tying my shoes or buttoning a shirt without assistance. I am one of the lucky few nonspeaking autistics who have been taught to type.”
Carlo and Alexandra Ponsica and their children, including 13-year-old twins Caleb and Noah, who have nonspeaking autism. Courtesy of Alexandra Ponsica
Alexandra Ponsica is the mother of four children, including two nonspeakers with autism, 13-year-old twins Caleb and Noah. She founded See Me Speak in New Jersey, a clinic that teaches students to communicate through spelling.
Ponsica said that many nonspeakers have a condition known as apraxia, which affects the part of the brain responsible for producing speech.
“People with apraxia may want to perform a task, such as speaking, but their bodies won’t comply,“ Ponsica said. ”Because of these co-existing conditions, nonspeakers are frequently misunderstood and underestimated.”
In 2015, speech-language pathologist Elizabeth Vosseller created Spelling to Communicate (S2C), which is one of the most widely used communication programs for nonspeakers with autism. Her nonprofit, the International Association for Spelling as Communication, has hundreds of registered practitioners across the United States and the world.
In S2C, the teacher is called a communication partner. During the early stages, the partner uses a hard plastic board the size of a piece of paper with some large letters cut out like a stencil. The student is taught to hold a pencil and place it through the stenciled letters.
As their skills improve, students advance from pointing to letters on letter boards to typing on a keyboard to spell. Over time, as they develop accuracy and speed on the letter board, some nonspeakers progress to typing on a computer.
For years, Bonker could not convey her desires and needs to the people around her. Her parents, Ginnie Breen and Ray Bonke
r, attempted to understand her, but they were left to guess what was bothering their daughter, or what she wanted, because she was unable to use gestures or sign language.
When Elizabeth was 5, her grandmother saw a “60 Minutes” segment about Soma Mukhopadhyay, a mother who taught her autistic son to communicate by pointing to letters.
The Rapid Prompting Method, created by Mukhopadhyay in the 1990s, was the first version of the S2C technique. The Indian educator moved to the United States in 2001, and the technique gained attention, leading to Vosseller’s organization and other providers.
Ginnie contacted Mukhopadhyay. Once a month for more than half a year, mother and daughter flew to Austin, Texas, for week-long lessons.
Improvement was gradual. Within a year, she was able to express herself. She eventually graduated from high school and attended Rollins, a college in central Florida.
Elizabeth Bonker, who has nonspeaking autism, founded Communication 4 All, a nonprofit that teaches nonspeakers with autism how to communicate through spelling. Courtesy of Ginnie Breen
When she was 13, Bonker had a collection of poems published by Baker Publishing Group in 2011 called “I Am in Here.”
In “My Plan,” one of the poems, she wrote about a long-term goal.
I have a plan
To make a stand
For people like me.
Someday you will see.
She also started writing song lyrics, which caught the attention of Boston-based band The Bleeding Hearts. Her mother and members of the group are friends.
Tom Morello, a guitarist with Rage Against the Machine and one of her mother’s classmates at Harvard, heard about Bonker’s writing from Breen at a college reunion. He teamed with The Bleeding Hearts to record her lyrics in the song “Silent Cage,” which contains the following lyrics:
Welcome to my silent cage.
Can you feel my simmering rage?
The world thinks I got nothing to say.
They want me to stay that way.
At Rollins, Bonker joined her brother, Charles, who has autism but can talk.
She earned a degree in social innovation and a minor in English with a 4.0 grade-point average and was one of five valedictorians. The other four honorees chose her to make the commencement speech.
With her mother at her side, Bonker implored fellow graduates to serve others in the spirit of another Rollins alumnus, iconic television personality Fred Rogers.
“God gave you a voice. Use it,” Bonker said in her commencement speech through her computer. “And no, the irony of a nonspeaking autistic encouraging you to use your voice is not lost on me. Because if you can see the worth in me, then you can see the worth in everyone you meet.”
Bonker told her classmates, “I have struggled my whole life with not being heard or accepted.”
She said her dream is to relieve the millions of nonspeakers with autism in the world “who are locked in a silent cage.”
Handley’s son, Jamie, was diagnosed with autism at 16 months old in 2004. He told The Epoch Times that he learned about S2C from a friend whose son used it and had a successful outcome. That was December 2019.
He scheduled an appointment for his son with Vosseller.
“She turned to Jamie and she said: ‘I know you can do this. I know how smart you are. You don’t have anything to prove to me, OK?’” Handley recalled.
“He was spelling words the first day. The second day, there was a lesson on plants. He spelled carnivore with no problem. Then she asked him to spell the opposite of carnivore, even though the word wasn’t in the lesson. He spelled herbivore. She told me that is called prior knowledge.”
“That was the moment I went from wanting to believe there was something special here to fully believing that Jamie’s whole life was going to change in the best way imaginable,” Handley said.
For almost 18 years, Jamie was unable to share with his family how he was feeling and what he was thinking. In a matter of months, Handley said, his son escaped his silent prison and developed the ability to tell him he didn’t want steak in his Chipotle bowl and that he wanted to attend college.
Jamie is 23 now. He types independently on a keyboard the way everyone else does, Handley told The Epoch Times.
Now, Jamie has completed high school and started community college classes. His long-term goal is to earn a degree in neuroscience.
“He wants to better understand what happened to him and his friends, and how he can alleviate suffering in other nonspeakers. He’s very much an activist for his people,” Handley said.
He and his wife, Lisa, also have a 26-year-old son, Sam, who is a professional lacrosse player, and an 18-year-old daughter, Quinny.
“It’s hard to put into words the magnitude of the change that happens for children who go from not being able to communicate to being able to freely type what is on their mind,” Handley said. “It is life-changing for the entire family.”
“Dysregulation is a big challenge with nonspeakers, which leads to tantrums,“ he said. ”When they learn how to spell, their regulation dramatically improves because they are happier and less frustrated. They can tell their parents when they do and don’t want. They can get their needs met.”
Handley is still involved in autism advocacy as a Substack author, but he told The Epoch Times that his focus has turned to helping Jamie “optimize his life and make up for lost time.”
Through the new communication system, Handley learned that travel is one of his son’s passions. The family has ventured around the country and the world in the past few years.
Ponsica contacted Handley when one of her autistic sons had an epileptic seizure.
“He said: ‘I know you’re not going to understand this right now, but I need you to talk to Noah like he understands everything that you’re saying and walk him through it. And then when you get out of the hospital, I want to tell you about a therapy that we’ve been doing with Jamie, and it’s been successful to improve his communication skills,’” she told The Epoch Times.
Ponsica called Handley as he requested, which led to a consultation with Vosseller. Her children had an improved quality of life once they learned how to communicate, she said. See Me Speak was the first S2C clinic in New Jersey.
“I’m now able to get to know them—what they like, dislike, their aspirations, how they feel,“ Ponsica said. ”They can decide what they want to do, and who they want to be, and I can be their support system to get them there.”
Children such as Caleb and Noah benefit from getting the autonomy they lacked when they were unable to express themselves, Ponsica said.
“Just because people can’t speak doesn’t mean they don’t have complex thoughts and feelings similar to their non-autistic peers, nor does it mean they lack the desire to communicate,” Ponsica said.
“We all want to be seen, be heard, be understood. Those who are neurodiverse and not speaking want the same thing, and they can have that now that there is a way to effectively communicate.”
Bonker echoed Ponsica’s sentiments.
“The deaf have sign language, and the blind have braille. Now is the time for nonspeakers to have typing,” said Bonker, who established a nonprofit called Communication 4 ALL “to ensure all nonspeakers have access to communication and education.
“With communication, we can participate in our families and contribute to our communities. Typers can live happy, productive lives.”