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How to Advocate for Your Nonspeaking or Minimally Verbal Child or Adult
Over the last decade, there has been an increase in autistic self-advocates coming into the public eye through their incredible means to advocate for themselves - and others like them. These individuals have become a powerful voice for boards, committees, research and quality improvement...
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Supporting Teens and Adults in Becoming the Best Self-Advocate They Can
The creation of self-advocacy is a story that is one of pioneering and revolution dating back as far as 1968 (Glumbić et al., 2022). Today, many self-advocacy organizations target elevating neurodiverse voices and providing space for neurodiverse individuals to advocate for themselves. The current...
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This is What Autistiphobia Looks Like: Why Autistic Advocacy Matters
The Researcher A lot of people do not like Autistic people. Which is a common topic in Autistic spaces. But many allistics who want to advocate with us, as allies, stop talking to me when I mention attitudinal barriers to accessibility. Or else they find creative ways to avoid the...
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Autism Advocacy: Inclusion, Empowerment, and Human Rights
“Autism isn’t this strange alien thing, it’s just a different way of thinking and experiencing the world. Some of us will find ourselves more or less compatible with modern living than others, we will all have different needs…but autism is not terrifying or awful, nor is it marvellous and...
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Advocating for the Advocate
Experiencing a life-changing event is one of the reasons people start advocating. For autistic people, advocating can mean stepping so far out of their comfort zone socially, it feels like they’ve lost sight of it. As for myself, I went from feeling invisible most of my childhood, to talking in...
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Advocacy on Behalf of Less-Impaired Autistics
In the more than two decades since my diagnosis, I have attended countless autism community events of just about every kind, not to mention numerous others in which issues concerning autism somehow came up. In virtually all of these, I routinely disclosed that I was on the autism spectrum and on...
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How to Advocate Successfully at School for Your Child with Autism
You want what’s best for your child with autism, but you’re not a teacher or a speech and language pathologist. How do you get the school’s special education team to listen to your ideas? What do you do if you suspect your child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) is failing...
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Autism Advocacy Advice for Families of Color
Autism occurs equally in people of different races, ethnicities, and income levels, but autism services are not distributed equally, according to research. As a group, children who are Black, Hispanic, Asian-American, or low-income often receive fewer therapies and services for autism.1-2 They...
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Research-Based Recommendations for Building Self-Advocacy Competence
Self-advocacy, an essential ingredient in our quest for satisfaction and fulfillment in life, is a learned skill that involves self-awareness, social and communication strategies, and behavioral competencies. Self-advocating involves communicating a person’s needs so that another person is able...
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Using Explicit Instruction to Teach Self-Advocacy
Those diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can benefit from alternative pedagogy, and the utilization of different approaches for more abstract skills should be a primary focus. Self-Advocacy is a set of skills that involve executive functions, social communication, and adaptive functions....
