Are Robots Ready to Deliver Autism Inclusion?: A Critical Review
Open accessAbstract
The marginalization of autistic people in our society today is multi-faceted as it includes violence that is both physical and ideological in nature. It is rooted in the dehumanization, infantilization, and masculinization of autistic people and pervasive even in contemporary research studies that continue to echo ableist ideologies from the past. In this work, we identify how HRI research reproduces systemic social inequalities and explain how they align with historical misrepresentations, and other systemic barriers. We analyzed 142 papers focusing on HRI and autism published between 2016 and 2022. We critique these studies through a mixed-methods analysis of their definition of autism, study designs, participant recruitment, and results. Our findings indicate that HRI research stigmatizes autism in three dimensions - 1) the pathologization of autism, 2) gender and age-based essentialism, and 3) power imbalances. Our work uncovered that about 90% of HRI research during the timeline explored excluded the perspectives of autistic people, particularly those from understudied groups. We recommend broadening the inclusion of autistic people, considering research objectives beyond clinical use, and diversifying collaborations, foundational works considered, & participant demographics for more inclusive future work.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Tools alone are insufficient without structural change and shared decisionmaking.
“Tools alone are insufficient without structural change and shared decisionmaking [29, 38].”
From Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education (2025) · cites this paper as [29]
Cites
Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis
Cho, S., Crenshaw, K. W., & McCall, L. (2013) · Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society · doi:10.1086/669608 · Cited by 4,126 · cited 3× · see citing works
“This theory has been widely applied to study how social identities intersect to create unique experiences for marginalized populations [28].”
BackgroundMethodMaenner, M. J., Warren, Z., Williams, A. R., Amoakohene, E., Bakian, A. V., Bilder, D. A., Durkin, M. S., Fitzgerald, R. T., Furnier, S. M., Hughes, M. M., et al. (2023) · MMWR. Surveillance Summaries · doi:10.15585/mmwr.ss7202a1 · Cited by 2,706 · see citing works
"I am just terrified of my future" Epistemic Violence in Disability Related Technology Research
Ymous, A., Spiel, K., Keyes, O., Williams, R. M., Good, J., Hornecker, E., & Bennett, C. L. (2020) · Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3334480.3381828 · Cited by 160 · see citing works
ADHD and Technology Research – Investigated by Neurodivergent Readers
Spiel, K., Hornecker, E., Williams, R. M., & Good, J. (2022) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3491102.3517592 · Cited by 150 · see citing works
Winkle, K., McMillan, D., Arnelid, M., Harrison, K., Balaam, M., Johnson, E., & Leite, I. (2023) · Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction · doi:10.1145/3568162.3576973 · Cited by 111 · see citing works
Managing Stress: The Needs of Autistic Adults in Video Calling
Zolyomi, A., Begel, A., Waldern, J. F., Tang, J., Barnett, M., Cutrell, E., McDuff, D., Andrist, S., & Morris, M. R. (2019) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3359236 · Cited by 101 · see citing works
Self-citationFunding Priorities: Autism and the Need for a More Balanced Research Agenda in Canada
Krahn, T. M., & Fenton, A. (2012) · Public Health Ethics · doi:10.1093/phe/phs027 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education
Hermann, J., Jansen, N., Richter, U., Fleer, A., & Doganün, A. (2025) · Proceedings of the 25th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research · doi:10.1145/3769994.3770007 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“Tools alone are insufficient without structural change and shared decision-making [29, 38].”
- Authors
- Rizvi, N., Wu, W., Bolds, M., Mondal, R., Begel, A., & Munyaka, I. N. S.
- Affiliations
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Del Norte High School, United States
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2024-05-11
- Pages
- 1-18
- OpenAlex
- W4396833119
- Cited by
- 30
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 2
- FWCI
- 20.15
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion, cc-by-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, human-robot interaction, autistic people, inclusion, ableism, stigmatization, essentialism, power imbalance, research participation, participant recruitment, research design
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
