Autism Awareness vs Autism Justice: What's the difference?

This month, we are seeing a lot of information about Autism Awareness. Whilst it's incredibly important to build awareness and visibility around neurodiversity, I wonder if there is another way to look at this, progressively.

Autistic people are often marginalised and excluded from mainstream society, making access to opportunities and resources to live fulfilling lives incredibly difficult. Through looking at this issue through a lens of social justice, I wonder if we can create the space to build a more inclusive society that values different ways of thinking.

Some of the areas in which we could do more work to promote tangible social justice could be:

1. Education:

Autistic students often face significant barriers to to accessing education that meets their needs. Awareness looks like knowing there is an issue, but justice looks like equipping all schools and colleges with mandatory training and resources to support neurodiverse students as standard.

2. Employment:

We know autistic people are underrepresented in the workforce and struggle to obtain (and then retain) employment. Awareness is recognising more needs to be done by employers to facilitate higher levels of employment. Justice means taking real steps as employers to adopt inclusive hiring practices, make reasonable adjustments and create safe, supportive work environments to enable people to bring their best selves to work...on their own terms.

3. Healthcare:

Many autistic individuals have complex health needs, and accessing healthcare is a real challenge for various reasons. Promoting social justice in healthcare looks like ensuring all clinicians have effective training around neurodiversity, and making it mandatory for all healthcare professionals to make reasonable adjustments for autistic people. It also means creating sensory-friendly environments within health services.

4. Housing, transportation and recreation:

These areas make up a huge part of what it means to belong to a community. Social justice means all of these aspects need to be accessible and welcoming for neurodivergent people.

We have a long way to go as a society, in meaningfully implementing these things, and achieving a truly inclusive society across the board.

What tangible steps do you commit to taking, to move from "awareness" to "justice"?

How about we start celebrating Autism Justice, instead of Autism Awareness?

Join our journey and become a #catalystforchange.