‘I am a coder. I am an accessible web developer. I am neurodiverse.’ The homepage of Prem Sankar’s website CodeWithPrem says it loud and clear. For the last couple of years, the 27-year-old Chennai-based coder with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been working on making websites more accessible.
“Prem learned coding in 2019,” says his mother Mangai Alwar. “He gets paid ₹5,000 for a website. He has created several websites for weddings and other celebrations as well as works towards making existing websites accessible. It makes him happy that he is earning,” says Mangai, who also volunteers with training those with intellectual challenges in coding.
Prem mastered his coding skills under mentor Manu Sekar, a self-taught web developer, who founded HashHackCode through which he empowers the marginalized and the neurodiverse in coding. “Children with intellectual challenges such as ASD receive primary and secondary education, but not tertiary education which is what can help make them independent adults and give them a career path. That’s what I am trying to do with coding,” says Sekar. In two years, he and his team of 40 mentors have taught more than 70 young adults from India, the US, and the UK, some of whom have started their ventures, and some who work in larger organisations. In 2021, his students designed an accessible website to help the visually challenged access information on Covid-19.
Several studies show that those with autism have an aptitude for logical thinking and therefore pick up coding quickly. They also have a good chance of excelling in jobs that require precision and repetition – data entry operators and coders for instance.
“We want to create a community of people who are skilled and integrated into society not for sympathy, but for the work they do,” adds Sekar, who teaches programming through patterns to make the learning more intuitive. Sekar has now set up HashStudio in Adyar, which houses a team of neurodiverse web and app developers, who can be hired out for projects.
For Autism Awareness Day and month, HashHackCode is hosting a virtual gallery in metaverse to showcase their students’ works in coding, art, and music. “We want the community to see the strengths of those with ASD. Each week, we will be updating the gallery with new works of our students,” says Sekar. The metaverse gallery can be accessed on a laptop or VR headset with the following link https://bit.ly/HHCAT2022.
