Every article I read about the common social struggles of autism, talks about the need to build a supportive and inclusive environment.
They never go into what is needed in order to do that effectively, because the correct answer means changing how all the normal people behave to become more supportive and inclusive.
My hot take is that being “inclusive” when it comes to gender, race, nationality, family status has such a low bar. It’s basically “don’t use slurs at work”. Please note I didn’t call this equity - it doesn’t do much to improve the experience of equity deserving groups. I’m not suggesting they benefit from this.
It’s kinda funny how it demonstrates how foolish it was to exclude people based in race or gender, because those traits don’t really prevent people from performing the function the employer wants them too, as long as everyone chills the fuck out and leaves them alone.
I can’t even get people to message me when they see me with my (giant, over ear) headphones on at my desk. They will just stand behind me, talking at me, and getting mad. The most simple things are too hard!
Yes.
I don’t even need anyone to do anything other than adjust their expectations around my style of communication and how I go about completing my work. Everything gets done as and when it needs to.
This is the thing. People have blown inclusiveness and accessibility into such a huge thing (“you can’t expect the world to cater to your every whim” and bullshit) when quite a bit of it is actually pretty minor… unless you’re extremely rigid but hang on, that’s us isn’t it? 😅
Non autistic people are incredibly rigid too imo. Simple changes like text-based communication (never lived in a time when this is SO simple to implement lol) could make all kinds of places from employment to health services and government services more accessible. Or “quiet hour” (do other places do this?) at supermarkets - they lower the lights, turn down the radio and machines, announcements and y’know what? Most people don’t notice until they come back on at full brightness/volume. It doesn’t affect most people but it can be extremely beneficial for some! This could be done so much more widely and make places more accessible.
Both visual and audio information on public transport. Again, this benefits everyone - most people wear earphones on public transport (and other public places) and would benefit from visual signage. This one frustrates me because where I am we do have this but it’s inconsistent. Some busses have the screen showing you where you are for each spot, some don’t, it’s random - that’s not accessible.
These aren’t outrageous asks especially with the technology we have, honestly we’ve had the technology to do these things easily for decades now so it really is a choice that it’s still not done (effectively). When I hear people arc up about these very basic accessibility needs it really just reminds me that the “rigid” trait of autism is not quite accurate. Perhaps we’re just rigid about different things than non autistic people are rigid about? But imo being particularly rigid is not exclusive to autism.
D