Hunter Wagner joins his friends in an impromptu snowball fight. Credit: Courtesy of Karen Krainz Edison
April is Autism Acceptance Month, and autistic students at Ohio State don’t want the university community to “raise awareness” for autism — rather, they want people to educate themselves about autism and challenge stereotypes.
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurobehavioral disorder and typically first presents in early childhood. It impacts a person’s behavior, social communication, emotions and learning development, according to Innerbody Research. As a spectrum disorder, it includes the previous diagnoses of autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, and people’s types and severity of symptoms can vary greatly.
Grant Raymond, a fifth-year in communication and participant in Ohio State’s Autism College Experience (ACE!) program — which provides resources for autistic students to achieve academic, social and professional goals — said everyone experiences autism differently.
“The biggest misconception is that a lot of people with autism are just very similar in the ways they behave,” Raymond said. “There’s a lot of diversity on that spectrum. If you’re a higher functioning individual on that spectrum, people might have trouble really believing that you’re on that spectrum at first.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates nearly 5.5 million U.S. adults have autism and about 1 in 54 children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, autism symptoms are separated into two categories: social communication and restrictive or repetitive behaviors.
Social communication symptoms include avoiding eye contact, difficulty maintaining conversation, difficulty understanding other points of view and having facial expressions that do not match verbal cues, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Restrictive or repetitive symptoms include repeating certain words or phrases, hyperfixation on interests, getting intensely upset by routine disruptions and having sensory issues such as texture, light, sound or temperature sensitivities.
Kerry Perdy, a third-year in English and ACE! student, said it’s important for people to understand that having autism does not make someone less intelligent or capable.
“The world needs to give us a chance, to hear us out and not talk over us, and realize who and what we really are,” Perdy said. “Most people with autism do have this idea of where they think outside the box and they don’t see this narrow view of what a person should be in this society. People need to start thinking that way themselves.”
Perdy said to do that, allistic people — people without autism — should listen to the autism community. An example of this is the Autism Society of America’s March 4 announcement that it would officially change its references of “Autism Awareness Month” to “Autism Acceptance Month” and asked people outside the community to follow suit.
“While we will always work to spread awareness, words matter as we strive for autistic individuals to live fully in all areas of life,” Christopher Banks, president and CEO of the Autism Society of America, said in the announcement. “As many individuals and families affected by autism know, acceptance is often one of the biggest barriers to finding and developing a strong support system.”
Perdy said another change in the autism community is the movement away from the puzzle piece symbol — used by some organizations such as Autism Speaks — because of its ableist origins and connotation.
According to the National Autistic Society of the U.K., the puzzle piece was first associated with autism in 1963 after Gerald Gasson, the non-autistic parent of an autistic child, created a logo for the newly-formed National Autistic Society with the image of a crying child superimposed onto a puzzle piece.
“The Committee decided that the symbol of the Society should be the puzzle as this did not look like any other commercial or charitable one as far as they could discover,” the minutes from a Feb. 14, 1963, meeting of the organization’s executive committee read.
In a paper presented at a 1987 autism conference at the University of Kent, Helen Green Allison, a founder of the National Autistic Society, said the puzzle piece was so effective because it showed that “children are handicapped by a puzzling condition” that “isolates them from normal human contact.”
The peer-reviewed journal Autism announced in an editorial in 2018 that it would remove the puzzle piece symbol from its journal covers after consulting with autistic and allistic researchers and autistic self-advocates, concluding that the symbol represents a history of non-autistic scientists, doctors and parents attempting to “fix” autistic children.
“The puzzle piece implies that autistic people are somehow incomplete and need to be made whole,” the editorial reads. “This links to the question of whether it is desirable, or ethical, to seek a ‘cure’ for autism.”
Instead of the puzzle piece, Perdy said many members of the autism community prefer using an infinity symbol to represent the diversity in experience of autistic people.
Perdy and Raymond said allistic people should speak to autistic people with patience, respect and in an age-appropriate way. They said it is important to include and uplift autistic people.
“Do your research, get on the internet and really listen to what people with autism are saying and really get an idea of how these people feel when they’re treated in a way that they think is unfair,” Raymond said. “View your interactions with neurotypical people and those with autism, keep making observations, and try to form a better understanding of just how these people react to the way you’re talking to them.”
