💙 Building Autism Acceptance: An Education-Based Approach 💙

How autism impacts our participation in society and how it can be helped

Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash — edited by author

Imagine playing a game. A game you’ve never played before. Everyone else around you seems to be having fun, they know what they’re doing, they know the rules… but you’re confused, puzzled, you don’t understand anything, and you get ridiculed for it — You were never given any rules.

That’s what it feels like to have Autism. The game is the game of life.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD, hereafter referred to as autism) is a developmental disorder and is widely misunderstood in the US. It has multiple comorbidities and a wide range of intensity — no two autistics present the same way, even within immediate family.

Autistic traits typically consist of nonstandard speech development (strange prosody, limited speech, non-verbality, etc.), sensory differences, and social differences. Autism can range from invisible to easily recognizable, and is often hidden by ‘high-functioning’ autistics through masking. Even though many autistics can be labelled as ‘high-functioning’, they are still disabled and likely still require some sort of medication and or accommodation in order to live comfortably. Many ‘high-functioning’ autistic adults use Augmentative and…