How Well Environmental Design Is and Can Be Suited to People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A Natural Language Processing Analysis

Abstract

The quality of life of people diagnosed as having Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is essential for increasing their self-reliance and reducing their communication problems in order to allow them to work, take care of themselves, and develop a capacity to intercommunicate with their surroundings. Their need to organize their day-to-day and workplace surroundings has been addressed in the literature via long-term intervention programs aimed to imbue people with ASD with interpersonal communication capabilities. Yet, there is still a gap in the literature regarding new design methods aimed at creating a safe and friendly environment adapted to the needs of people with ASD. Therefore, this study has two objectives: (1) to shed light on the existing factors and methods related to workplaces designed to be friendly to people with ASD, specifically adults, through a natural language processing (NLP) analysis of existing scientific papers in the field of architecture and design; and (2) to explore the factors that might assist in improving the design and architecture of adaptive spaces for people with ASD by analyzing a corpus of experts’ documents. The study findings and their implications are analyzed and discussed.