I believe autistic people can do many more great things if given the right opportunities, even many of the autistic people who have yet to communicate through speech.
How do you imagine a future, more autism-friendly, community?
In a city with a high prevalence of autistic people it could be important that the avarage-Joes there had some understanding of autistic people, and that way autism awareness could get cheaper for that state or country when the awareness is centralized in one city.
The city could have more focus on making the public places and education autism-friendly. How could we encourage autistic children to read in the library? Probably by not pushing it, but anyway, if there was some sort of marketting campaign or whatever to make autistic children like libraries that would probably be great.
*hope to yet again create a thread similar to
The ultimate AS school*
I think it is perfectly possible to attract many autism families to a location by providing more services there, we have actually already seen this happen.
Something would always have to begin as something small.
I think big fantasies could probably be done easier in Second Life.
I was thinking about making a thread titled "Community Building", but I realised that I've already made too many threads on similar topics without getting much replies. So I'll post stuff in this one from now on, you can too ofcourse.
I don't have isolation as a goal, but I think that if autistic people and parents had more ability to see oneanother that could have a couple of benfits.
Ouch!
Simen, Ian wasn't dead serious.
Anyway, I think that if autistic people and parents where more sentralized to an area they could among other things be more able to get stronger political voices.
In Norway there have been alot of autism families that have travelled to a Sandefjord because of the free services given there. There has been established an organisation called Sandefjord ASD there aswell, with their own website! I'm not sure what to think of it however. At their site's menu you'll see "diets", "treatments", aswell as "vaccines". If I click "vaccines" it says "The site is under construction, here it will be information about autism and vaccines!".
So a negative aspect of getting autism families together might be that you get alternative treatments popular, so I think it would be important that parents in such communites are educated to be aware of alternative treatments and are learnt to confront them with scepticism.
More on different things when it comes to community building;
How could I (or Simen as he tried once) create a community for autistic people living in Norway? There already is a forum where both parents and people with several different conditions which is about as active as AFF, so what could a new community offer which the other doesn't?
• One thing the other community lacks is guidance as to how to use their IRC chatroom, so no one ever use it.
• It is mostly chit-chatty and doesn't discuss much over issues, they mostly just express sympathy to one another. This has probably something to do with the norms there and a new forum would probably just simply not have such norms. I think a more discussing community could have other things to offer.
• I think hand-picked texts translated from English could be a database of "stuff" for autistic members which might make the new community more interesting.
• A blog ring.
• Norwegians tend to misspell Aspergers as "Asbergers", so that would probably be a good tag to set up for google searches. I would also include other tags like "aspie", "aspie" was the thing I searched for when I found AFF.
• Encouraging members to learn programming and offer help when it comes it, probably from other members, I'm not sure exactly how to do that however.
I'm contemplating on a possible name. "Spektrumitten" which means "The Spectrumite" would probably be a great name. I hate it when aspies think that it is only they who can communicate so I'll make it clear that it is for everyone along the spectrum. However, "Nurd Supreme" sounds like an awesome name too!
Autistic people are many different people, so we can't just assume that we wont see any crime from them.
My impressionis that many of us are very troubled and scarred individuals. Maybe we would be able to rise to the occasion but given that so many of us struggle even to manage our lives on a small scale, to enter into a social contract on a large scale (and even a small community would be "large scale" to a lot of us) might not be realistic. It would be asking too much, socially, of people who struggle socially. Honestly I cannot imagine being a 24/7 member of a closed or semi-closed community of any kind. I think we would have a very high dropout rate.
Members of an offline autistic community shouldn't have to interact with others in the community if they don't want to, but I think such communities could be a safer social environemnt for many on the spectrum.
Pikajedi4 apparently have alot of ideas, but I think it might look abit too much like a utopia. My idea is simply to get a high prevalence in an area, while not likely exclusively for autistics, and then to do some not so big scale changes and arrangements to the area to make it more autism friendly.
I find it interesting because it sounds possible.
When it comes to the "not-so-big-changes-and-arrangements" I was thinking about stuff like using LCD lights in public places, have more space to make public places less crowded, have some spots near places which often gets crowded where people can wind-off. Also, teach the teachers there how to make the education more autism-friendly. Aspie students would probably often do tasks from schoolbooks if the groupwork is way beyond their current capabilities.
I think city-life might alse be abit too stressfull for some of us, but it isn't so that we all have to be neighboors in a high-prevalence city.
Edit: alse should have been also
Sub cultures which are rumoured to have a high prevalence of autistic people in them are interesting.
Examples are Goth, Star Trek, Furry Fandom, and internet communities around PC and video games.
I might not know alot of programming, but alot of the little I know I've learnt from communities around PC and video games. Communities like that also encourage art and story-writing. So this is great for aspies.
What is it that is common among these sub-cultures and communities? What makes them popular among autistic people? How could we make the autistic community gain more force and popularity in a similar fashion as such communities?
I think we might have different ideas about city life.
But anyway, it is possible to attract autism families to an area by providing more services there, and maybe we could manage to adult autistic people to the same area by providing programming jobs there like how Silicon Valley got a high prevalence of autistics.
I have this vision of a community where autistic people are learnt into doing great in skills like programming, art and other things that many autistics are known for. I guess someone who can't see themselves or their children ever getting near something big in such areas might find the idea offensive, so how could it be a great place for people who don't have sk1llz or whatever?