Autism (not so) friendly

This is a fair point. The NAS inspects schools with regards to how well they cater for autistic students. On the whole I think this is really positive but I do believe there are holes in the system. I think I've seen that they do the same for some businesses. However a business can advertise themselves as autism friendly without the seal of approval from NAS. In the instance I'm talking about it was an individual who's selling point of their business is that they cater for sensory needs (hard to explain properly without giving examples but I'm always wary when posting online). It was just so clear that they didn't understand sensory needs at all and in an attempt to make a situation easier for myself I'd potentially made it harder with my choice of person.

Sounds like we could have "benefitted" from the same course material.

What compounded the hassle: surrounded the behaviour of the course delivering organisation - really poor on so many aspects.

I wish I had asked around a bit more before I enrolled - as I later discovered: my type of experiences with the delivering organisation were commonplace and well known locally - to the extent that - to safeguard some students (on other runs of the same course) - their adult mental health advocates had found it necessary to step into supporting the resolution dialogue!

They definitely shouldn’t be saying one thing and doing another but how exactly is any place be it business or otherwise going to define exactly what it is to be autism friendly? Are the staff given more training? Is there noise resistant walls, who decides all this as well.

Yes this is another good point actually. I did an autism qualification during lockdown. Not because I felt I needed to update my knowledge - but because I didn't have anything to prove my knowledge and we had to do CPD for work whilst working from home. It was an incredibly frustrating qualification that was really outdated and still referred to things like the triad of impairments which is no longer referred to as that. I had the knowledge to know that much of the qualification was wrong but I remember thinking there must be so many people that are getting their autism knowledge from these courses and it's totally wrong.

Agreed, the world should treat everyone equally. I don’t see the need for such signs, why are they all of a sudden autism friendly, were they not before? The term friendly isn’t the best to use either. As if we should be included in exceptions, surprised they haven’t got the men in black at the front door.

I can see the difficulties for a bigger business like a supermarket but I agree the quiet times that have started have not been the success that was hoped. I'm not 100% sure what the solution to that is. I don't really see why things like lights can't be dimmed all the time and music could at least be on the quiet side but obviously supermarkets get busy, there's not much getting round that. I believe they put it early because it would be difficult to tell people they have to leave for quiet hour. But if they haven't had deliveries then that's completely ridiculous. The big problem is neurotypical people make these decisions and don't actually ask neurodiverse people what would be helpful.

My issue in the instance I refer to was that this person is marketing themselves as being autism friendly, it's literally their selling point and they just aren't.

Maybe we could all brainstorm a selection of more inclusive / preferable terms or phrases ...but maybe ...in an ideal World: we should not need such phrases at all?

If people treated all people as equal people - the phrases would be redundant anyway.

To be honest I hadn't even thought about that side of it. I'm not so bothered about the title though, I'd just like them to be able to deliver on what they say.

Autism friendly seems a bit belittling in the way that shops would also put a dog friendly sign in the window. You wouldn’t put “friendly” for other neurological issues would you? Perhaps it’s just a nice way of the owners to seem accommodating and progressive but I’d say they value profit over moral standards regarding those on the spectrum. 

Our local tesco has what it calls it's quiet time, where lights will be dimmed, radio's and other noise making stuff turned off, only its between 8 and 10am, I asked the manager about it and he couldn't believe I was questioning it, even though he agreed that they wouldn't have had any delieveries yet and people would have to come back for things they were waiting for, which would be a lot of fresh fruit and veg and frozen stuff.

I don't think these people think, I'm not sure they know how to think, they seem to think we should be grateful for whatever crumbs fall off the NT plate and not complain.

I hear you loud and clear (I experienced a shocking example of one last year - they were teaching people (from service providers) how to be Autism-friendly ...and were not themselves so ...in the very least!  Even their legislative materials were woefully out of date ...and those were the highlight.  Engagement with them was discouraging, disappointing and damaging).

Now we could all do our spirits a favour - by trying to balance things a bit (no names needed to be quoted) - it would just be good to know such positive outfits - deserving of the "Autism-friendly" accolade actually do also exist.