Speaking about Autism

Even people who have autistic kids form generalizations and assumptions to categorize everyone in those conversations. It's understandable knowing they have busy lives and other stuff to deal with so their understanding is pretty minimal unless their literal career is working with aspies and autists.

We vary so heavily there's rarely enough time in the year to understand each individual to the level we understand each other... the difficult thing is describing that understanding.

Personally, I'd rather read about first-hand accounts and autobiographies from aspie writers and books written by professionals on the subject and keep it to myself, only bringing it up when looking for help with something relevant.

If they don't see it in me, not important to talk about.

I also find that good visuals/slides are very helpful. I usually brainstorm for the presentation and then once I have a rough plan, I roughly make some visuals/slides and I then start to practice giving the presentation and then finalise the slides and their order so that they help me in what I want to say. I tend to practice each slide/ bit until I am happy with it, making notes as I go along which I can then use later to help me when presenting.  By repeatedly practising it (and possibly also then writing down one version of how I say things and updating it as I keep going through- so essentially the script gets created based on what feels comfortable for me to say out loud), the presentation gets engrained in my head- then the script is there for emergencies/ if I get stuck. This is how I approach presentations, but I think different people approach it in very different ways so not sure if this helps.

I'm not sure who I look at during presentations- definitely not a single person- I think I look at my slides a lot and then just somewhere beyond the audience... 

I'm a trainer and actually...that's not a bad approach actually. Let them throw out their questions and misconceptions one by one for you to unpick for them.

Maybe you you have a secret question box. Introduce yourself, then pass them round the box to pop in any question they want. Then pull out the questions to answer randomly. 

It's a gamble. Some groups will come to the heart of all that's truly important, others might not.

Another approach might be to prepare something to present along a structure of myths about autism, or the 5 things that matter to you about living an autistic life.

Or you could split them in to groups and ask them to consider what autism means or what problems fo they think autistic people have. Give them 10 mins on that and use their responses as a platform for discussion.

Well done you for stepping up by theway. Please let us know how that goes.

Yes, talk about the interventions used in autism - some can be good, but things like ABA can be just about enforcing conformity rather than genuinely helping with issues like anxiety or sensory triggers.

As I have always hated public speaking, but had to do it occasionally as part of my job, I developed a few coping strategies. I always have good visuals, to deflect a bit of attention from me. I like to move about a bit, it helps me not get into a 'rabbit in the headlights' mindspace. I write bullet points on cards, as my reading comprehension is much faster than I can convert written words into speech - so a full script is useless to me. I punch a hole in the corner of the cards and loop them together with string (if they are dropped, they stay in the correct order). I never do the 'look at one person and address everything to them' trick, which might work for allistics, but for me as an autistic, I much preferred regarding the audience as an amorphous blob.

I don’t know how that will help me as I’m not a fan of Autism Speaks anyway. I guess I could say how horrible Autism Speaks are in my presentation

I agree with your statements but I’m not understanding how this is relevant to the question? The OP has be asked to give a presentation about autism from an autistic person’s perspective not about Autism Speaks

Autism Speaks as an organization is focused in the wrong areas and does not fully understand what they discuss.

One of their most famous short films, “Autism Every Day” is notorious for having a scene where a mother of an autistic child said she wanted to drive off a cliff with her child in the car in response to her child being suggested to move schools. They also purposely used footage taken to make the family seem as dysfunctional as possible to sell the narrative that autism is hard and worse than anything else.

Then a few years later the cofounder of Autism Speaks, Suzanne Wright, published an op-ed which used wildly inaccurate statistics that were created to sell this narrative. One of the then prominent autistic authors associated with the organization, John Elder Robison stated, "articulates a view of the 'autism situation' that is very different from my own. She says things I would never say to people with autism and cannot in good conscience stand by. Given her role as leader of the organization, I am afraid it is my signal to exit the Autism Speaks stage."

TLDR; the organization is far more focused on creating a narrative boogeyman of what autism is in order to continue gaining funding by straw manning autistic people and their families. The organization only wants to appear good while doing the bare minimum.

Yes, as Martin says, start with a description of what autism is and the ways people are affected, and then talk about your own experiences and difficulties.  Talk about your difficulties right through from childhood to now, and what you've learnt about yourself, plus mention special interests you have.

Try adding humour as well as 45-60 minutes is quite long, it will help people relax and be more engaged with what you are saying.

Write it all down, or use Word or something, and then time yourself reading it out (not too fast).  You might have to add/remove bits to fit the time.

Leave 5-10 minutes for questions, as some people may think of something to ask you haven't talked about.

I would start with numbers - the proportion of autistics in the population. Then go through the usual suspects, communication problems, eye contact, empathy, sensory difficulties, anxiety, masking etc., and illustrate them with anecdotes from your own life and the lives of any other autistics you know. I would also make the point that it is not a childhood problem, autistic children grow into autistic adults!