ASD is only a disability because everyone else chooses to make it one. It is time that steps are taken by ourselves to free ourselves from this situation. Or has everyone now lost their pride and self-respect?
OK, just an example, explain, where does society come in here:
I am hypersensitive, I can feel the difference between hot and cold. No issues there. I have no problems with my hypersensitivity.
While I am cooking, it happens more than once, that I want to lift a pan from the stove. I feel it is hot, but I don't process in time what it means. So, I take the pan from the stove bare handed, while feeling it is hot. And I get burned.
Where did society make this happen?
Don't come with the story that it is "just" a co-morbid thing. It is part of me, part of why I am on the spectrum.
And who decided the best way of cooking would be a pan on a stove. I am pretty sure that if we controlled the design processes, you would not be burning your hands on a stove. The irony is that we dream up most of the technology, then NT's end up adapting it to suit themselves (and it becoming a pain in the arse for us to use - there are numerous obvious examples here)
Who decided on using visible letters on signs, making the world disabling for people who are blind.
Society is making blindness a disability, and being deaf, and having no legs, and lots of other disabilities.
Fortunately the easiest solution in those two cases is cure and will probably be a reality 10-20 years down the line. In our case, that isn't what we are after for the most part.
The cases where blind people have been 'cured' are not that promising. Brains adapt to the options people have. Blind people have a different way of 'viewing' the world. They make up for it by things not visually challenged people do not use. There are examples of 'cured' blind people who want to return to blindness, because the change is something that they cannot adapt to.
And what about people that are genetically prone to be very small. Or very tall. Do they need to be modified. Or will we have everything adapted to them.
Even when focussing only on ASD. People on the spectrum are so different. What is a good thing for one may confuse the other. I don't think society can be adapted to ASD wishes completely, simply because there is not one need that covers all.
That does not take away the need for adaptations. And they can be small, and don't have to change too much for the whole of society. Still having a clear positive impact for many on the spectrum.
In regular classes some small adaptations to cover needs of ASD and AD(H)D kids happen to be beneficial for most kids. So its a win situation beyond expectation. Only to be discovered after changing the structure of teaching to benefit the kids that needed it the most.
And this year, for the first time, a change had been made in the StNic rituals on TV in the Netherlands. We have a different StNic than most of you. He arrives the weekend after November 11. Is on lots of shows till his feast on December 5th. And then, miraculously disappears for a year. The disappearing without being mentioned was hard to deal with for a lot of kids on the spectrum. Especially for them, this year there was coverage of StNic leaving the country, back to Spain. And it will not only have been watched by ASD kids.
