Meet Bobby Bixby, 7, of Fairfax County, Va.

"When virtual learning started, Fairfax parent Mindy Bixby said, her severely autistic son, Bobby, knew 50 words. But after a spring & summer spent sitting uncomprehending before a computer, as pixelated teachers failed to reach him, the 7-year-old’s vocabulary dropped to 25..."

"Mindy told herself all of this was OK, because fall was almost here. Soon her son would be back in classroom, learning with the assistance of a special aide. Fairfax had offered parents a choice between virtual and in-person learning and Bixby had immediately picked the latter."

"Mindy told herself all of this was OK, because fall was almost here. Soon her son would be back in the classroom, learning with the assistance of a special aide. Fairfax had offered parents a choice between virtual and in-person learning and Bixby had immediately picked latter."

"Then [Fairfax] said school would be online in the fall, and the bottom dropped out of Bixby’s world. 'I’m used to society leaving us behind. I’m used to Bobby not being able to go to birthday parties...But the school system has always been a place where I knew he was accepted.'”

"In February just before schools shuttered Bobby hit a major milestone: Responding well to guidance from Fairfax teachers, he began using the machine to tell his mother about his day at school. It was a revelation to Bixby, who previously had to ask his teachers for information."

"In the first weeks of the shutdown, Bobby kept using the device to query his mother why school was closed. He pressed buttons that listed the names of his friends, then a button that said 'not in music' — a reference to Bobby’s favorite class."

“'Hima not in music,' he’d say. 'Paloma not in music.' Bixby looked at her son and told him no, none of them were in music class. But she promised they would be again, one day.
'And then, all of a sudden he stopped asking about music. He just stopped doing that entirely.'”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/it-feels-like-its-never-going-to-end-weary-dc-area-parents-brace-for-more-all-virtual-school/2020/07/22/b4828058-cc1e-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html. Here is the article. It's one of several very good recent ones by the Washington Post's education reporters, who have been all over this story.