Britton Payne: Promoting Authentic Autistic Representation in Pop Culture
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Who is Britton Payne and what is his background in entertainment and autism advocacy?
Welcome to Talking with Tech. My name's Chris Spougay and I'm here with Rachel Madle. Rachel, how's it going? Great. I'm excited to be here. We are doing an interview with Britton Payne. Britton, did I say your name right? How how m how did I do?
You did. Usually Britton is what's on the business card and then people call me Brit, B R I T.
Brit. All right. So Brits, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
So uh I'm an entertainment attorney, largely working in animation recently of Nickelodeon and Warner Brothers animation. And a while ago I did DC Comics. And uh I also have an autistic son who um he's now 11 years old. And so we got a diagnosis when he was about 18 months old. So my wife and I have been spending a lot of time since then familiarizing ourselves with autism. And through all of that, I decided I wanted to try and figure out About how to get more explicitly autistic characters in the kids' pop culture, in part because I was working in kids' pop culture. I was working at Nickelodeon when I was sort of cooking this up. And so I started speaking at Comic-Cons and other events. I spoke internally at Nickelodeon a couple of times about things like the history of autism in comic books and authentically creating autistic characters in kids' animation.
So out of that. I f started nonprofit earlier this year called the Autism Scene that's dedicated to try and get more autistic, explicitly autistic characters in kids' pop culture. And we are holding a competition called the OSPEC Awards, which is an animated kids series, spec script competition, spec meaning speculative. So you write a script that nobody asks you to write other than us for the competition. And in the the rule of it is that you have to have a meet a a series regular, meaningfully interacting with an explicitly autistic character. So among those autistic characters, of course, would be non-speaking characters who use AAC devices.
Why does Britton believe authentic autistic representation matters in kids’ animation?
One of the one of the prize categories is going to be best non-speaking character, and another one is going to be best use of an AAC device. Through all that, one of our board members, Alfonso Camacho, he's a non speaking This is a kid with apraxia who's a kid. He's 19 now, I guess. He's a young man. And he is on our board and he's a college student now. He he uses a couple of different ways of communicating. And he's become a friend of mine. And he came and saw one of the panels that I was doing and then said that he wanted to be on a panel like that, but he didn't think people would wait for him to respond. And I said, well, then that's maybe exactly why you should be on the panel, so that people like me who like to chit-chat really quickly can
And learn to wait so that it makes room for more people to have their voices be heard in the first place. And that's what led me to you guys.
Mm-hmm. I love that, Britt. I feel like we've had a lot of AAC users on this podcast, and that's one of the things that they share. Um, so much so that some of our our guests have asked us to not edit out some of the pausing. Um, because I think that's one thing that is a really important concept to understand when someone is formulating a message using AAC. It takes some time and it it it requires us as the listeners. To be really patient and not jump in and you know fill in that silence. Um, because sometimes that silence can be a little uncomfortable.
Yeah, I mean I've I've an attorney and at law school that was clear to me that when whenever there was silence I felt compelled to put up my hand whether or not I had something intelligent to say. And spending more time with Alfonso has shown me that all right, I I can wait and and the walls won't close in. Everything is just fine. It's some of the work that I I've been doing is trying to acclimate Neurotypical people. to accommodating and uh accommodating and including autistic people and particularly people who are not speaking, because it turns out it's not that big a deal. It's not that hard to do. You just kind of have to know what to do and then do it.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who is Britton Payne and what is his background in entertainment and autism advocacy?
0:08–1:50
2
Why does Britton believe authentic autistic representation matters in kids’ animation?
1:50–6:32
3
How did the Autism Scene and the AUSPEC Awards originate and what are their goals?
6:32–12:40
4
What challenges do non‑speaking AAC users face in media and how can listeners learn to be more patient?
12:40–18:04
5
What are the rules, categories, and judging process for the AUSPEC script competition?
18:04–22:13
6
How is generative AI being addressed in the competition’s submission guidelines?
22:13–25:53
7
Do studio executives see a market for autistic characters, and how can writers influence green‑lighting decisions?
25:53–27:54
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Talking With Tech AAC Podcast
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Episode 356: The State of the Podcast
Episode 355: Building an Inclusive Playground and Community
Episode 354: Brie Norton & Lynsey Phillips: Creating a Culture of Learning Language Using Augmentative/Alternative Communication
Bob Sagoo: Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Harchie Sagoo
Quinn Kelly: Connecting AAC and ASL to Support Deaf & Hard of Hearing Communicators