Tone Indicators: Designing Accessible CMC Cues for Neurodiverse Users

As messaging becomes increasingly salient to social connection and well-being, there exists a gap in understanding and support for neurodivergent users who may struggle with interpreting tone in computer-mediated communication (CMC). We look to existing accessibility practices among neurodivergent communities to thus propose a system of alternative cues that explicitly flag tone and intent, in hopes of better scaffolding neurodiverse communication styles. Through a mixed-method study of conversational pairs (N=18), we assessed the impact of these tone indicators on participants' experiences of synchronous messaging and social connection, interpreting our findings in the context of disability-focused design for messaging interfaces. We found that these alternative cues lowered the overall cognitive load of live tone interpretation for neurodivergent users, enabling a greater sense of confidence and control over self-presentation. In turn, participants reported more positive and in-depth conversations with their partners. We further observed that some participants typed more slowly, wrote longer messages, and used additional communication cues, like emojis and text stylization, concurrently. Participants' use and feedback on this tool also illuminated social context and collaboration's role in cue ambiguity. Our work subsequently suggests future research and design directions on supporting communicative accessibility via the intentional design of alternative cue systems and co-customization.