Esperire l’autismo. Tecnologie immersive tra rappresentazione e protocolli terapeutici.

Over the years, autism has become an increasingly prevalent disorder (1/36 U.S.; 1/77 Italy) and as a result, both therapeutic experimentation and its representations have increased, especially within new media. Immersive virtual experience fits into this landscape, presenting itself as a medium for communication that operates in a twofold direction: as a useful tool for endorsing new forms of therapy and as a representative window into the autistic world. Indeed, images constitute an alternative strategy to obviate the communicative difficulties typical of ASD, especially when verbal function is low: VR offers potentially endless learning possibilities through simulation and training in real environments. In this regard, some activities carried out by hospitals, associations and universities that take advantage of virtual reality as a medical device to create therapeutic scenarios are considered, such as, for example, the projects Antro Magico and La finestra sullo spazio of IRCCS E. Medea (LC) and 5A of the I3 Lab of the Politecnico di Milano. On the other hand, virtual experience is offered to non-autistic people as a more effective explanation than words: here, a set of VR films made by the National Autistic Society in an attempt to promote awareness and information about autism is considered.