Picture This


BY JACOB PALMER

As a general rule, the more people with autism can be provided with visual cues, the better they will be able to understand and manage their environment. It’s a lesson Tom Keating learned well. The 61-year-old Eugene grant writer spent 31 years taking care of his autistic brother James, and in the late 1980s developed a spreadsheet that created a series of nonsense characters that grew or shrank depending on how much money James had in his account. 

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BY JACOB PALMER

Company: Cognitopia
Founder: Tom Keating
Launch: Summer 2015
Headquarters: Eugene

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As a general rule, the more people with autism can be provided with visual cues, the better they will be able to understand and manage their environment. It’s a lesson Tom Keating learned well. The 61-year-old Eugene grant writer spent 31 years taking care of his autistic brother James, and in the late 1980s developed a spreadsheet that created a series of nonsense characters that grew or shrank depending on how much money James had in his account. 

In April, Microsoft announced
it is piloting a program focused
on hiring people with autism
for full-time positions in the
company’s headquarters.
“People with autism bring
strengths that we need at
Microsoft,” wrote vice president
Mary Ellen Smith in a Microsoft
blog post. “Some have an
amazing ability to retain
information, think at a level of
detail and depth or excel in math
or code.”
 

“The fact that he could see it as a graphic indicator really helped him,” Keating says. “And when he ran out of money, I could point to the computer, which would tell him he didn’t have any money left. He took that a lot better than he did from me.”

Inspired by that success, Keating in 2003 founded Cognitopia, a firm that builds software to help people with autism and other cognitive disabilities organize their daily lives. The flagship product, Picture Planner, launched in 2009, provides cues to help users form and stick to a budget, manage a schedule, get directions and more.

Picture Planner languished during the recession, a victim of the downturn, the transition from desktop to mobile and lack of business planning. Five years later, Keating is ready to move forward. The startup joined the RAIN Eugene Accelerator this winter; Keating has also hired a business manager, Matt Fanelli, 27. 

They are planning a Web-based suite of applications, to include Picture Planner, ScanDo, an app that provides users with instructional videos by scanning a QR code, and Goal Guide, an objectives-tracking tool. A Meetup style app is also on the agenda.

Says Keating: “Any area you can think of that any of us use for life management is an area we want to include.”

The Keating challenge

“How do you give [people with autism] the tools to help them manage their behavior so they don’t get into trouble in community settings where tolerance for marginal behavior is low?”

Back office

Cognitopia is funded by grants from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. Keating is seeking a developer to help build a prototype, to be followed by “fundraising that will help us get where we want to go.” 


Into the mainstream

BY LINDA BAKER

“You can’t discipline bipolar and severe ADHD out of a kid.” Diane Wiscarson is sitting in her cozy office in downtown Portland, where she works to ensure special needs kids get a free and appropriate public education. It’s a field close to her heart. While attending law school in the 1990s, the 56-year-old attorney spent many frustrating years trying to make sure her own son, who has severe cognitive disabilities, was getting his needs met in school.

Today, as owner of Wiscarson Law, she helps parents navigate the IEP (Individualized Education Plan) process — the IEP is a written document that is developed for each public school child who is eligible for special education. She divides her clients, about 100 at last count, into three categories: “confused, really upset and really pissed off.”

When collaborative discussions between parents and school districts fail, litigation is the last resort. Wiscarson is involved in one high profile lawsuit involving an autistic boy in Sherwood who was unable to bring his service dog to school because school officials would not pay for an aide. A complaint is pending with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Special education law is very rewarding, says Wiscarson, who also handles legal guardianships and higher education cases. “You can completely change the trajectory of a client’s life.”

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