Hey NAS we are different not disabled

VLD said:

The standard height of a hook is not always correct! 

Care to elaborate?

A coat hook at 2m is ideal for a long coat (trench coat style) but will not be suitable for a wheelchair user to access. Do we design if for access or function?

Should it be strong enough and stick out enough to support half a dozen heavy jackets or be more slimeline and safety concious (since it is more or less at head height)?

Can we ever say there is a "correct" height? I think "standard" is probably a compromise of function and accessability rather than trying to do any one job outstandingly.

Maybe that is the problem of overanalysing this issue - there can never be a true solution, only one appropriate for a specific situation that is unlikely to translate well to other dissimilar situations.

The problem is lack of thought and imagination. The height of a coat hook is an excellent example. Perhaps they should employ more autistic poeple using our abilities to inventivly think through problems and not rely on fixed lines of thought. The standard height of a hook is not always correct! 

Caelus said:

my maths teacher in school, he couldnt do maths... he wasnt a maths teacher he was a languages teacher, who they also used for english, and geography and maths... but he couldnt do those subjects...

Then the solution would be to tell your parents who would then complain to the school - that is how most stuff gets resolved. Once the knowledge is public domain then the school has to cover its back by doing its job and either hiring someone else or training the teacher.

The behaviour of the teacher reflected on his unwillingness to learn the subject (high school maths is far from rocket science, especially as the text books talk you through it step by step) so he probably deserved to be reassigned to another school over this or to lose his job it the contract stated he had to cover any subject.

As I recall it, teacher training college trains you to be a teacher in any discipline. You may have a specialisation but you are trained to cover any subject if required. Can anyone clarify if this has changed?

see it still isnt the learners problem, it isnt a learning difficulty then... its a system problem.

my maths teacher in school, he couldnt do maths... he wasnt a maths teacher he was a languages teacher, who they also used for english, and geography and maths... but he couldnt do those subjects... the school didnt care, they like any workplace have a worker and throw them at the problem. so they threw him into a subject he couldnt teach.... it isnt fair on him, it isnt fair on the students... it isnt the students problem. you can be fairer and say its the systems problem... but yet the teacher has a responsibility to teach so part of it lays on them in a teaching problem, the protblem that my maths teacher couldnt do maths, thats his problem, and the systems mostly, but his to some degree too.... he just sat there in lesson, reading his own book and told us if another teacher comes in pretend you are doing work.

Caelus said:

and for one i dont believe in learning difficulties... there is no such thing... there is only teaching difficulties of bad teachers that do not know how to teach.

That is a bit harsh.

Who is going to teach the teachers how to deliver the education to every variant of learning technique that we have.

Some need a rigid routine for learning without interruptions

Some can only learn visually

Some have attention issues (ADHD type symptoms)

Some have dyslexia / dysgraphia / dyscalculia / dyspraxia

Some mask or just tell the teacher what they think the teacher wants to hear.

and so on.

Is it really fair to put the load onto the teacher of getting the right variant of teachning style for every students needs. They are poorly paid and heavily worked as it is so to expect what is effectively a specialisation in teaching neurologically different students.

To me it is like expecting every doctor to be a heart specialist, a brain surgeon, an oncologyst, a gynocologyst etc - it just isn't realistic.

The solution is to up the teachers pay in exchange for retraining them to cater for more learning needs, but that needs money the system isn't going to get and effort from a group who are already fed up with the unrealistic demands placed upon them.

Which brings us back to having to take more initiative to supporting people who have difficultiy in learning using conventional teachning techniques - learning difficulties for short.

It perfectly describes the condition but maybe needs a makeover to be called differently educationable to keep from being perceived as insulting.

I agree with you that there should be a lot more focus on the positives. Employers consistently advertise for 'team players' and 'strong communicators' and what they get is employees who spend their days gossiping. All we ask is a quiet place to just get on with our work. The shockingly low numbers of autistic people in work suggests that even that is poorly recognised.

I find the NAS website in general (aside from this forum) quite unwieldy and hard to navigate. Much of it doesn't appear to have been updated in years. The Autistica charity seem to do a lot more in terms of research and active campaigns to improve autistic lives. Much of it by researchers who are autistic themselves.

One other thing which has occurred to me is that I do not know if it was actually NAS who first started using the term 'developmental disability'. It is also used in other countries (such as USA and Canada) and there does need to be some consistency in how autism is viewed across the world .

I would argue that I am disabled.

I am not able to do things that others do.

aye true, autism usually is the lack of social intelligence though.

There are also lots of different types of intelligence and different people can be and are intelligent in different ways.

and for one i dont believe in learning difficulties... there is no such thing... there is only teaching difficulties of bad teachers that do not know how to teach.

the learning difficulty one that they used to call it is very old fashioned and is likely the reason many people never got diagnosed.

they see you have problems, then they called it learning difficulty, but when they tested you for learning difficulty they instead found you actually smarter than average so you dont have a learning difficulty, so they they scratch their heads and go away and left you and considered you too confusing to diagnose due to them wrongly calling everything a learning difficulty at the time.

Yes of course!

https://aucademy.co.uk/

Aucademy YouTube channel:

1. https://youtube.com/@aucademy6195?si=TUdXBeyz8MDV02D5
   
   

Disability or not, most people simply refuse to understand autism and adopt a “one size fits all” approach and expect people to “just” conform and to be compliant and obedient without question, as we saw during Covid and given the traditional Irish Catholic model of disabilities in general, reminding people constantly about what they are “not able for” and demanding that people with autism simply “stay quiet” - even those who have experience of autism are incredibly impatient with those with autism and think they “know it all” and believe that the only way to manage autism is by means of ultra strict discipline to keep behaviours/symptoms of autism firmly under control, especially with childhood autism 

The point of the queer sub-culture is something that I’ve only vaguely heard of

Do you have a link for Aucademy?

Ian said:

TfL does not have the money to comply with disability equality legislation - "allegedly" - but can afford to spend £1m per mile on Boris's bikeways or Citizen Khan's ULEZ fiasco. Disability access is not "sexy" politically.

You have it there! "fixing" stuff does not make headlines like a new project does so it is not going to attract the budget it deserves. It isn't just transport this is true in - it is across the board in life.

If TFL could sell the idea as zero step for e-scooter access then they could no doubt drum up a lot more budget for it... Maybe there is something to work with there LoL.

I used a wheelchair for a while after an accident. To get to Birmingham I had to get a train to King's Cross St Pancras and then go half a mile by road to Euston because there is not a lift from the Northern line tube platform to the BR station. TfL does not have the money to comply with disability equality legislation - "allegedly" - but can afford to spend £1m per mile on Boris's bikeways or Citizen Khan's ULEZ fiasco. Disability access is not "sexy" politically.

Noise reduction, subdued lighting etc. can make offices less stressful for neurotypicals too ... many of my NT colleagues hated it when the team I worked for moved to open-plan hot-desking. It was just more extreme for those of us who were neurodivergent. Good ergonomics and pleasant working conditions benefit everyone.

Often it is just lack of imagination ... I was with a group of elected members being shown a new NHS facility by a senior manager colleague. "And here we have the disabled toilet [sic] "  "Very impressive, but why are the mirrors over the washbasins and the coat hooks too high up for wheelchair users to reach them? "  "Oh dear ... I will have to talk to the architect about that."  (No, talk to your disabled staff and patients before you pay the architect.)

I don't think those things are really shared though. We have different interests and few of them are unique to us as a community. We don't all stim and we certainly don't all info dump (my stims are quite subtle and hard to see and I don't info dump at all). And I don't think those things are big enough to count as a culture. (I think British culture is about a lot more than tea or small talk.)

That’s great, everyone needs flexibility.

My surgery has just introduced a system where if you want an appointment you fill out a form online and the form is then triaged and the most urgent cases get seen by the most appropriate person who will not always be a doctor. Patients can have an appointee fill out the form for them if they prefer or if they don’t have or don’t want to have an appointee they can still visit the surgery and the receptionists will help them (I’m not 100% sure whether they can do it over the phone - I’d have to check - but if the overwhelming majority use the form I don’t see why not. The other advantage is there is no 8am rush - you can fill in the form anytime.