I’m not sure if this is the kind of project you were thinking of at all, but a friend and I have been brainstorming about starting a restaurant that’s optimized to serve, primarily, autistic people, and secondarily, people with other disabilities, particularly mental/emotional ones like social anxiety. Notable differences from a regular restaurant are that ordering will be entirely computerized (enabling nifty features like being able to have the computer remember and act on each diner’s preferred/dispreferred/forbidden foods list) with an option but not a default of talking to a waiter, all tables will have built-in textual communication devices to allow diners to communicate with anyone in the restaurant (including waiters and management), the restaurant will have a silent section where even talking is forbidden and private rooms that can be reserved ahead of time, the menu will be optimized to allow for personalization of items in terms of content, size, order of presentation, and so on, and the decor will be designed to be sensorily inoffensive while also providing detailed descriptions of local norms via signage.
It will also make a point of hiring autistic people for all positions including management, and avoiding suppliers that donate to Autism Speaks while donating to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network as possible.
Our thoughts on the project so far are collected here—I’m sure I’ve forgotten some important things even given the length of the above infodump :). (Also, contacting me there will work better than contacting me here after the next few days—I’m not actually following LW anymore; I only knew about this because Alicorn told me.)
I’m not sure if this is the kind of project you were thinking of at all, but a friend and I have been brainstorming about starting a restaurant that’s optimized to serve, primarily, autistic people, and secondarily, people with other disabilities, particularly mental/emotional ones like social anxiety. Notable differences from a regular restaurant are that ordering will be entirely computerized (enabling nifty features like being able to have the computer remember and act on each diner’s preferred/dispreferred/forbidden foods list) with an option but not a default of talking to a waiter, all tables will have built-in textual communication devices to allow diners to communicate with anyone in the restaurant (including waiters and management), the restaurant will have a silent section where even talking is forbidden and private rooms that can be reserved ahead of time, the menu will be optimized to allow for personalization of items in terms of content, size, order of presentation, and so on, and the decor will be designed to be sensorily inoffensive while also providing detailed descriptions of local norms via signage.
It will also make a point of hiring autistic people for all positions including management, and avoiding suppliers that donate to Autism Speaks while donating to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network as possible.
Our thoughts on the project so far are collected here—I’m sure I’ve forgotten some important things even given the length of the above infodump :). (Also, contacting me there will work better than contacting me here after the next few days—I’m not actually following LW anymore; I only knew about this because Alicorn told me.)