(upbeat music)
- April second is World Autism Awareness Day.
And you may be wondering what that means
or how you can help.
Aren't we already aware of autism? What's the next step?
What can you do to improve
the lives of autistic people today?
As we'll see later, a lot of the historic messages
we still hear around autism awareness are horribly outdated
and even harmful to our community.
So in this short video, we'll go through the key things
that you need to know to move beyond awareness,
improve understanding, build inclusion,
and ultimately achieve acceptance and appreciation.
The initial intention of the day was to highlight
the need to help improve the quality
of life of those with autism
so they can lead full and meaningful lives
as an integral part of society.
Awareness in this context
does not mean awareness of autism itself,
but rather awareness of the need for society to help.
And a quick look at the latest statistics shows
that this need is greater than ever.
So while awareness by itself doesn't change much,
it's the first step towards taking effective action.
In the early days, autism advocacy was led
by parents fighting for recognition, support
and services for their children.
The message was that autism is a thing.
It's much more common than we first thought.
No, it's not caused by bad parenting.
As necessary as this movement was
it was done for us, not by us.
The only voices at the table were those of doctors,
parents, and professionals.
To them, autism was a problem to be solved,
even a disease to be cured.
We were a mystery, a puzzle, broken, and in need of fixing.
They tried to make us less autistic so we could fit in
and success was defined as
being indistinguishable from our peers.
These days we know better! As it turns out,
the missing piece was the autistic experience
and fortunately, today we have very
many autistic self advocates
sharing their stories and insights.
With the inclusion of our voices
autism is no longer a mystery
and we now understand it in the context
of natural neurodiversity.
Newer symbols of autism include
the rainbow infinity symbol representing
our infinite diversity and potential
and another personal favorite of mine, Autistic Gold.
We are rare but precious.
So while virtually everyone
has heard of autism these days,
public understanding is often based
on little more than popular stereotypes.
For years, that stereotype came
from the 1988 movie Rain Man.
Today, there are a number
of other autistic characters in popular culture.
However, it's worth noting that these tend to
be almost exclusively intelligent middle-class white men.
It's a start, but we've got a long way to go.
To comprehend the full diversity of the autistic community,
we need to hear real stories from real people.
We are all so different from each other
that we could not possibly be represented by just one voice.
Despite our personal differences, advocates tend
to agree on several powerful key messages:
We are not broken. We don't need to be cured.
We need support to help us be ourselves,
not therapy to learn to fit in.
In other words, accepting autism means accepting me,
including me while I'm different and liking me
for who I am without trying to change me.
Acceptance would mean we no longer need to hide
and more and more of us could safely drop the mask
and show our true selves.
But why would we accept autism
if it just makes you weird, lazy, rude, forgetful,
stubborn, inflexible, or any other one
of these unhelpful stereotypes.
That's why the next step of appreciation is so necessary.
Remember the autistic gold analogy -
in nature gold is hidden away.
Its value is not obvious.
These days, we recognise a long list of household names
who we now understand to be autistic.
And we're slowly recognising the immense contribution
that these people, and by extension
all autistic people, have made to the world.
Not just Temple Grandin, but Einstein and Mozart,
just to name a few.
We're not all geniuses, We're not all going to
become famous and change the world.
And why should we have to be?
Our value comes from being 'uniquely human'.
As Dr. Barry Prizant puts it.
To find the gold, you have to get to know us
and to do that, our society needs two things.
First, it needs to be safe for us to come out of hiding.
Second, we need accessible ways
to be included in everyday life.
I guarantee you that once you start to get to know us,
as you slowly learn to look past the differences
to our common humanity, you'll clearly see
that we have so much to contribute.
I want to live in a world where all of our gifts,
talents, quirks, and differences are celebrated
and appreciated for the value they bring
to enrich all of our lives.
Now, I'm not pretending that everything is rosy,
life on the spectrum is really hard.
We don't fit in and we deal with all sorts of challenges
that most people would never even think twice about.
But whoever said that life was supposed to be easy?
The world needs autistic people.
The world needs diversity in every sense of the word,
not just of race, culture and gender, but of personality
and neurology, of style and ability
and way of seeing the world.
So what are you doing for World Autism Awareness Day?
If you're fundraising, remember to ask yourself,
where does the money go? - to an organization?
What they do? - research? What kind? - is it positive,
autistic-led and life affirming?
Do they promote autistic voices?
Or are they trying to help us without listening to us?
In summary, we have a long way to go
and awareness is only the first step.
To achieve acceptance and appreciation,
we need to improve understanding
and work towards inclusion.
You can help by including autistic people,
amplifying autistic voices and approaching autism
with an open curiosity to discover
the gold we have to offer.
Remember, don't force me to fit in,
include me while I'm different.
Thanks for watching.
And please share this video as part of autism acceptance.
(upbeat music)