Anemone's Research Emporium

Georgia Straight essay on autism and accessibility

Anemone Cerridwen
April 23, 2009

A while back, there was an article in the Georgia Straight about a forum on autism coming up in the Vancouver area. The forum appeared to be for parents only, no autistic people were interviewed, and there was no mention of how autistic people felt about this forum. (Other than that the article was fine.)

I wrote to the Straight and said, basically, "nothing about us without us", hoping they'd print my letter in the letters to the editor section. They didn't, but I got a reply a little while later from an editor, who asked me some questions. I didn't want to play "poster child", so I pointed him to my website and the Autism Hub and left it at that. A while after that, he got back to me and offered me the chance to write an article for the Straight. Wow, my first chance at a paycheque in nine years! I was very surprised. I've gotten out of the habit of thinking of myself as someone who might actually get paid for work.

He suggested I write on the myths of autism, but I am so tired of that subject, and quite frankly not that much interested in the first place, plus it still sounded a bit too "poster child" for me, so I countersuggested with an article about accessibility, in particular the second-class status email has compared to the phone, and how that works against us, since that was something I'd been doing a lot of thinking about at the time.

They ran my essay the week of April 2, 2009 (Autism Awareness Day, not that I was keeping track), and posted it to their online edition as well. It's still there last time I checked. You can go read it here:

http://www.straight.com/article-210536/give-autistic-adults-chance?

I figure as long as they still have it up you can read it there. You can check movie listings while you're there. And they allow for comments, something I don't do. If they ever take it down I can repost it here or somewhere.

And if it makes me sound "poster child", oh well. I did try to keep it political.