Less light, no noise: A grocery store for people with autism
The lights. The noise. The people. All those cars.
A simple trip to the grocery store can be an overwhelming ordeal for people with autism, says Dawn Tuckwell.
“Grocery stores are well lit, we know that,” says Tuckwell, the mother of an autistic son and Niagara chapter manager for Autism Ontario.
“But the amount of fluorescent lights, and the lights on the freezers as you walk by, the ringing of phones.
“Any kind of things we take for granted as we’re walking around in our daily life and that we can ignore, those are the things that people with autism just can’t.”
So she gives full credit to Sobeys for the sensory-friendly shopping program the grocery chain started this week.
Each Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Sobeys stores will be a little quieter and calmer to help people with autism, dementia and other conditions.
Lights will be dimmed by 50 per cent. There will be no announcements over the PA and no pipedin background music. Buggies won’t be collected, so there will be no banging of metal.
“The registers actually make a noise, but we can turn that noise down,” says Dave Camilleri, who manages the Sobeys outlet on Scott Street in St. Catharines.
“And any communication between the departments will be done physically, not through any sort of electronic system.”
Autism is a developmental disability that affects a person’s ability to communicate and process the world around them.
It affects about one in 66 Canadians, “and that’s one in 66 diagnosed,” says Tuckwell.
“I like to say that because there are lots of people not diagnosed or waiting to be diagnosed or who have fallen through the cracks.”
Wednesday was the first night for the program, and Camilleri planned to be at the front of the store to explain it to customers. Signs were posted, too, laying out the details and motivation behind it.
“It’s a learning experience for everybody,” he says, adding he knows of several customers plus a couple of his staff who have autism.
“We’ve never done this before … I think it’s a great opportunity to help those who would benefit from it.”
Tuckwell says it will be a big help.
Often, adults with autism will bring someone with them to help when they go grocery shopping, or wear headphones to cancel out the distracting background noise.
“Their senses are so much stronger than ours, so they would hear those things louder than we would,” she says.
“They are distracting, that’s for sure, and it causes them to feel panic.”
Sometimes, she says, they will get to the store but see a full parking lot with shoppers walking in and out, and they’ll just turn around and leave.
“Going into a crowded place when you have autism, even when you’re with your family, you are already on high alert not knowing the environment or the unpredictability of it,” she says.
“They you add those other things … you’re heightening that awareness right away and putting them in a state where they’re already overstressed before they’ve even started.”
Some businesses, such as Howell Family Pumpkin Farm on the outskirts of Pelham, offer space that’s free of those distractions for people with autism and similar conditions.
“Lots of kids with autism just could not handle the loudness of that place, and the crowds,” Tuckwell says.
She hasn’t seen a business in Niagara go to the lengths Sobeys is, though, to accommodate them.
“What’s exciting for us here at the chapter is that there are businesses out there in the community thinking of their customers and what their special needs are,” she says.