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Inside Dell Technologies’ Neurodiversity Hiring Program: An Autistic Cybersecurity Analyst’s Success Story
How can a company's neurodiversity hiring program be evaluated? In part, by listening to its participants’ stories. Alex Sobil, Cybersecurity Analyst at Dell Technologies, is a case in point. His is a success story as inspirational as it is indicative of a truly inclusive...
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Autism Without Fear: Reframing Our Conversations About “Sex”
A quick thank you to Autism Spectrum News and Publisher, David Minot. I’ve known David and the publication for almost two decades, wrote for it more than once, and am thrilled to herein move my column, “Autism Without Fear,” with the hopes of many years of collaboration. Now, David also...
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An Exploration of Why Autistic Adults Are Practicing Consensual Non-Monogamy
Autistic people are more likely to report difficulty making and sustaining relationships,1-3 leading to assumptions that they aren’t drawn to socializing, but we now know that autistic people desire and benefit from platonic, romantic, and physical relationships to a similar degree as...
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The Big Sigh
This is one of those days. I feel it the moment I open my eyes. I instantly loathe that I am awake. I fall into an old habit of calculating how many hours I will have to reasonably be out of my bed before I can crawl back into it without having to feign illness or apologize for not returning a...
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Autism and Its Many Comorbidities: Conditions, Deficits, and Challenges
There is a popular and common saying within the autism community that “when you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” It becomes clear that this is true when one considers the variety of conditions which occur comorbidly with ASD. Being on the autism spectrum is...
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Why So Many Autistic Individuals Have Eating Disorders
Eating disorders have a devastating effect on the lives of those affected and are associated with the highest mortality rates of all mental illnesses. While they can affect anyone, there is a higher incidence of people with autism who have eating disorders compared to the general population....
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Autism Spectrum Disorder and Comorbidity: A Systematic Approach to Treatment
Comorbidity refers to the presence of one or more mental or physical conditions that coincide with a primary mental or physical condition (Al-Beltagi, 2021). Research has shown that 70% of autistic children meet the criteria for one comorbid disorder and 40% meet the criteria for two or more...
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An Autistic’s Vision for Lasting and Successful Workplace Neurodiversity
Consider Dan Burger, a gifted and autistic computer science student at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. In spite of the challenges he faced along his journey through school and into the workforce, Burger's exceptional abilities at visual problem-solving and dealing with large amounts of data...
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Autism and Education: One Size Does Not Fit All
Having attended many talks, workshops, and education-related autism community events, I often hear the expression “one size does not fit all” used by teachers and other professionals who work with students on the spectrum. It is always gratifying for me to hear people having the most experience...
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Handwriting and the Autism Spectrum
Handwriting matters. Even those who never write must decipher others’ handwriting (many of us autistics never managed to read cursive: even if drilled intensively in copying it). Although handwriting intervention efforts and studies typically focus on output, a larger problem (especially with...
