Welcome to our series on travel training, where we will be covering an important and practical tool that many Autistic people may find helpful in building up their independent living skills. 

In Part 1 we will take a closer look at what travel training is and the role it might play in a classroom or as a preparation tool for Autistic adults. 

Our ability to travel is one of our most valuable resources when it comes to accessing spaces in our communities, meeting our daily needs, and seeking out new opportunities. Being able to do so independently can represent a significant step toward independent living! 

But for many Autistic adults, the travel opportunities available to them may also entail considerable barriers to entry, whether it’s specific sensory challenges associated with a particular place, trouble with remembering a series of specific procedures, or feeling stuck if anything doesn’t go according to plan. 

Travel training is a way we can begin to help individuals overcome the barriers they face to their most accessible transportation options by creating a strategy as well as a resource for remembering what to do in the moment.

So let’s take a closer look at what that might entail!

Travel training is a series of exercises and resources designed to help students access specific transportation options in their communities. 

Travel training will look different from place to place, and even from student to student as the focus is meant to be on the specific travel methods a given student would use in practice to get to a given place. Travel training can include planning for challenges or barriers that often come up during travel, developing specific strategies and procedures for traveling, creating emergency backup plans, and choosing any items or tools that may be helpful in navigating a particular travel environment. 

Travel training can be more broad and focus on the idea of using a particular transit system or more narrow and focus on the specific procedure of taking one particular route consistently. The common theme of all travel training is the focus on transit.

One of the most crucial components of independent living is being able to access our communities for the resources we need. While we are sometimes fortunate to be able to access our community without considerable travel barriers, the reality for many people is that some form of travel is necessary to meet at least one crucial need in their lives. 

While it is great that many Autistic people who need to travel do have access to support networks that can help, the ability to travel independently can be transformative and turn accessing the community from something that must be done on a specific schedule to something they can do on their own time. 

Travel training offers that independence as well as a way to address some of the potential barriers or pitfalls of any given travel option and establish emergency procedures for when the unexpected happens.

It’s never too early to consider travel training, as long as the training matches the comfort level of the student in question! 

While the ability to travel independently can be hugely beneficial to many Autistic adults, it is also true that some will not feel comfortable taking that step and that is okay too! It is very much worth exploring the idea of what a given form of independent travel would be like while also not forcing a student to go beyond what they feel ready for or what fits with their goals. 

Beyond that most important consideration, other great times to consider travel training are when there are prominent public transportation options available where you live or a given student is particularly reliant on a certain day-to-day travel routine. 

As long as it feels like it might make such a routine feel more possible or a little bit easier it’s worth considering implementing some form of travel training.

The answer to this question will depend on the student! In some cases, the most appropriate approach might be to develop a protocol to practice and let families handle the actual transit part. 

In other cases, use of public transport might be part of a form of supervised practice so students can practice their skills with a safety net. 

Other times still students may benefit more from learning to read the local bus routes than from practicing getting on and off at particular stops. So our most crucial need and starting point is an understanding of what type of transportation a given student hopes to use, what they will use it for, and what challenges they have faced or anticipate facing. 

The specifics of what we need for a given student will arise from our answers to those questions.

Now that we have the basics of travel training down we can think about how we might try to teach travel training in the classroom or at home. We will cover that in our next post, and in the meantime if there is any travel training related topic you’d like to see us cover more in depth then we would love to hear from you! Just drop us a line at hello@autismgrownup.com and we will be back next week for part 2!