Demonstrating Consent Rings: Explicit Non-Verbal Consent Through Haptic Wearables as a Solution to Unwanted Sex Between Neurodivergent Partners

Neurodivergent individuals are at elevated risk of sexual violence. They often face distinct challenges in intimate communication, where difficulties in both verbal communication and social cue interpretation can lead to misunderstandings of consent and unwanted sexual activity. To make consent communication more accessible, we present Consent Rings: a system of symmetric haptic ring wearables designed by a team of neurodivergent researchers to facilitate unambiguous, non-verbal consent negotiation. The prototype operationalizes a haptic consent model, utilizing distinct vibration patterns in the rings to signal initiation, agreement, and revocation of consent to interpersonal behavior. Consent Rings recognize that consent is not permanent, thus the consent vibration decays over time, requiring active reconfirmation from both partners during interaction. We detail the hardware implementation of Consent Rings and a companion research interface to log consent metrics with wearer permission, laying the groundwork for empirical studies on haptic and accessible consent models.