For Walt Bower, Preservice Training Coordinator for HDI, there\u2019s an important first step to take when talking about how best to support autistic people. \u201cPeople need to learn what autistic people want them to know,\u201d Bower said. \u201cThat is why I prefer to talk about autism acceptance instead of autism awareness.\u201d Bower\u2019s perspective falls in line with a shift that\u2019s becoming more and more popular in how organizations and people are talking about autism. And April, which used to be called Autism Awareness Month, is consequently being reframed as Autism Acceptance Month for a lot of people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think this shift reflects input from autistic individuals and other community leaders as well as our commitment to sharing how we can promote advocacy for human and civil rights for all usautistic people,\u201d he said. And that change in language is important, Bower said. Often, those calling for awareness do so without the input of autistic people. As a result, it\u2019s been less helpful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes, autism awareness campaigns, albeit well-intentioned, can make people who are not familiar with autism afraid of autistic people,\u201d Bower said. \u201cIt has done more harm than good\u2026It\u2019s presented autistic people as bad, or autism as something that needs to be cured.\u201d So if it doesn\u2019t need to be cured, how should people approach autism? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Bower, a big part of it is accepting that autism isn\u2019t abnormal. \u201cI think we need to think about disability and autism as part of life,\u201d Bower said. \u201cWe need to recognize disability and autism as one integral part of diversity. Autistic people can get stigmatized as just being autistic when autistic people have many different identities, as leaders, students, workers, employers, parents, family members. Autistic people have and lead rich and fulfilling lives that are shared with the people all around us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also highlighted some of the models through which disability is viewed \u2013 in particular, the medical model of disability, which views disability solely through a lens of conditions that need medical intervention, a problem that must be solved, and the social model, which thinks of autism as just a part of human diversity that deserves to be accommodated. Bower also spoke of another model that he\u2019s intrigued with that tries to find a way to incorporate elements of both models. He\u2019s excited to see where those discussions lead and to learn more in the future. But he thinks it\u2019s important that those discussions always seek to include a diverse range of people with disabilities, autistic people included. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe slogan of the disability rights movement is \u2018Nothing about us without us,\u2019 which means that autistic people need to be involved whenever autism is discussed,\u201d Bower said. \u201cWe want to make sure that autistic people are included in conversations about autism, whether those conversations are about lives of autistic people or autistic people as a whole in our society\u2026Autistic people know the problems that autistic people face, and have a lot of ideas how to solve them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article represents the opinions of the author and interviewee, not that of the University of Kentucky. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For Walt Bower, Preservice Training Coordinator for HDI, there\u2019s an important first step to take when talking about how best to support autistic people. \u201cPeople need to learn what autistic people want them to know,\u201d Bower said. \u201cThat is why I prefer to talk about autism acceptance instead of autism awareness.\u201d Bower\u2019s perspective falls in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":21192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,16],"tags":[29,30,31,18,19],"class_list":["post-21191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership-self-advocacy","category-news","tag-autism","tag-autism-acceptance","tag-autism-acceptance-month","tag-merge","tag-merge-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdi.uky.edu\/merge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}