Autism News, 2017/04/21

[ada_hoffmann]

April is Autism Month – Autism Awareness Month to some, and Autism Acceptance Month to others, and sometimes just the annoying month where we have to listen to more Autism Speaks propaganda than usual – so there’s been a lot of news!

• ASAN condemns the U.S. President’s Autism Awareness Day proclamation


• How Apple is honoring Autism Acceptance Month (including discounts on AAC apps)


• Apparently, Lindt no longer supports Autism Speaks (YAY!):


• Would you like a roundup of as many posts explaining the problems with Autism Speaks as possible? Kirsten Schultz made one.

Shannon des Roches Rosa has been making some good 101 posts this month at The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism:

• Inappropriate approaches to autism science


• Eleven ways to make an autistic child’s life easier


• Five avoidable mistakes that autistic children’s parents make

Pan-disability politics and policy, from the US:

• Michelle Diament on how new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch deals with disability cases


• S.E. Smith on why more disabled people are employed in some US states than others


• The U.S. Supreme Court recently made an important decision about disability and the death penalty. (For anyone who needs more evidence about why representation in fiction matters, this article describes how the state of Texas has literally been evaluating people’s eligibility for the death penalty based on their resemblance to a fictional character.)


• Elsa Sjunesson-Henry on protesting while disabled

From Canada and the UK:

• Alexandra Sienkiewicz on why disability claims over mental health in Canada are difficult to navigate


• Penny Pepper on how disability laws in the UK have encouraged bullying


• Helen Ries on why the laws around disability payments in Ontario need to change (I live in Ontario, but I’m pretty sure there are similar bad regulations in many other places.) 

Posts about ABA:

• Diary of a Birdmad Girl talks about what it’s like to be an ABA therapist (and how little training and regulation the profession actually has)


• Sparrow R. Jones on alternatives to ABA

Media and writing:

• Kim Broomall reviews “Queens of Geek” by Jen Wilde


• J.R. Jackson on writing “rules” that don’t work for disabled writers


• Julia Bascom, executive director of ASAN, talks about the new autistic muppet on Sesame Street

Sad things:

• Lifestyle Solutions, an Australian nonprofit that manages group homes for disabled people, is under investigation for abuse and neglect causing a series of deaths.  (TW: In addition to what it says on the can, there is also mention of sexual assault. I have not watched the video that accompanies the article but, based on the description, would not recommend doing so.)


• Amelia Hill interviews three autistic mothers of autistic children (TW: all three mothers discuss, among other things, a fear of social services taking their children away; abuse by third parties is also mentioned.)

 

Comments

[rhoda_rants]

Jeeez. That "Lennie" rule is mind-boggling.

[ada_hoffmann]

I know, right? I was shocked. I had no idea that was how they decided anything.

I feel like there is a LOT to unpack here about how fictional representations become more real to people than other real people. I also feel like I'm not the one to unpack it, as I haven't read "Of Mice and Men" and I also am not particularly well-informed about the death penalty. (In Canada, it's very much Not A Thing. It was a thing historically, but stopped being one long before I was born.)

[rhoda_rants]

Heh--thanks for saying that, because I haven't read it either. Switched schools at just the right time to somehow miss it being assigned, I think. I wish the death penalty wasn't a thing here. And I am very intrigued by fictional characters becoming "real" to people in various ways, for a lot of reasons, but using that as the basis for the fate of a human life.....no. Just.....no.