I used to spend my summers as a camp counselor at a camp for 'special' kids/adults. The 'disabilities' ran the gamut; physical, emotional, and mental. But it was almost always the case that the campers had so much more to offer than most people knew how to accept. One autistic kid immediately assigned each counselor the name of a celebrity. I was John Ritter. I asked him if I could be Harrison Ford.. but, no... apparently he'd chosen John Ritter for a reason. He knew everyone's car, license plate number, and what everyone had eaten for lunch at camp everyday for the entire time he'd been attending. He absolutely loved to help with the other campers, and was very intuitive about it. But, he could not seem to get his letters lined up on a page when signing his name to an art project.
It's always nice to see articles like that one that let folks who are different self-define rather than explaining the difference in artificial terms. In some ways, I think these differences are probably not terribly unlike the differences between the ways most humans and some animals relate to their worlds. There is meaningful cognition, but it's largely unintelligible to the others.
The way the gentleman in the article describes his perceptions sounds like he might have a touch (pun intended) of synesthesia. Here is a brief description, though not as good as the book: The Man Who Tasted Shapes.
http://www.mixsig.net/
cheers,
Kevin