Autonomy, Safety, and Social Design: Towards Designing Effective and Inclusive Technologies for Autistic Young Adults

Abstract

Autism is a lifelong condition, and autistic individuals experience distinct social, educational, and vocational demands across different stages of life. Technology-enabled assistive tools have the potential to support these needs, from improving diagnostic accuracy to facilitating social interactions and promoting independent living. However, most existing technology research in autism is largely focused on autistic children and their needs (e.g., early diagnosis and communication support). As autistic children transition into adulthood, their needs evolve toward areas such as higher education, employment, independent living, and community participation. Despite this shift, technology research specifically focused on autistic young adults (ages 18-25) remains limited. To bridge this gap, our research aims to identify the current state of autism technology research pertaining to autistic young adults. This paper reports our findings from a systematic literature review $(\mathbf{N}=\mathbf{8 3})$ of autism technology research collected from the ACM Digital Library. Some of our important findings indicate that while many systems reduce social pressure through paced or asynchronous communication, only a few support everyday peer relationships, romantic connections, or real-world social interaction. Recurring design gaps include limited support for sensory safety, insufficient user control over interaction pacing, unclear visibility boundaries, and continued reliance on corrective or training-based models. Our research identifies critical gaps in existing approaches and provides an evidence-based foundation for developing more inclusive technologies for autistic young adults. We derived actionable design guidelines that prioritize the ability of autistic young adults, as these would enable them to make their own choices and control their own actions, and provide emotional safety and flexible communication structures. We further demonstrate how these guidelines can inform the design of structured interaction flows in social technology systems.