By way of introduction, I just want to say that, as a member of Leeds Trinity University’s academic staff who also has a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), I thought I would write something to mark World Autism Acceptance Week, taking place from Tuesday 2 to Monday 9 April.

What’s interesting to me as someone attracted to the tick and balance of language – something which of course underpins my work as a poet and an academic – is that, unlike most other designated occasions for collective cognitive nudging, this isn’t billed as an Awareness week. This seems perfectly reasonable: after all, I expect that most people are aware of autism, though it might be worth restating the main challenges which can be faced by those with ASD, as listed by the National Autistic Society:

• Social communication and social interaction challenges
• Repetitive and restrictive behaviour
• Sensory over/under-sensitivity
• Highly focused interests
• Extreme anxiety
• Meltdowns or shutdowns

Now, I obviously don’t want to put you off but, to be up-front, I wouldn’t read this blog myself. I’ll get around to why that is shortly.  Yes, some autistic people need full-time care, and some make billions of dollars in Silicon Valley, but most of us learn strategies to sort of keep our heads down and bumble along in a generally unobtrusive fashion. Indeed, for many of us, the main day-to-day challenge is posed by none of the above; rather, it’s the exhaustion of trying to fit into someone else’s (narrow) idea of what constitutes ‘normal’, particularly when the rules don’t always make a lot of objective sense. Believe me, negotiating this for most of one’s waking life can seriously impact upon the effectiveness – and unobtrusiveness – of one’s bumbling.

So, what would really help the estimated one-and-a-bit percent of the UK population with ASD is indeed acceptance; most particularly the acceptance that maybe ‘normal’ is a little bit broader than advertised. Along with this should come the acceptance that some assumptions about ASD may not be even close to accurate, whether about autism in general or individuals in particular (who, as a group, certainly put the ‘diverse’ into neurodiverse). To take two of the most commonly encountered assumptions:

• “We’re all on the spectrum.” No, we’re not – simple as that. Remember the furore surrounding FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s well-meaning but misguided comments ahead of the Qatar World Cup?
• “You look fine to me.” No, again. Just because someone looks like they can do ‘normal’ stuff like ‘normal’ people doesn’t mean that any aspect of it is easy. And some days they may not be able to do it at all. 

Concomitant with this is the most valuable acceptance of all: the acceptance that you almost certainly don’t know what an autistic person is experiencing. The National Autistic Society has some pretty good resources if you’re interested but, even if you read up on it, you’ll just have a useful general idea. To borrow a common phrase: “If you know one autistic person – you know one autistic person”. We are all different.

I was prompted to write this because there is currently, quite rightly, a growing and long-overdue focus – certainly in the UK public sector – upon issues of diversity, equity, and belonging regarding sections of society who have historically been marginalised. Within this, though, invisible difference is for the most part still ignored, to the extent that some groups and individuals are becoming increasingly disenfranchised. Failing sweeping social change, I’ll maybe use this latter as the basis for a blog for next year’s Autism Acceptance Week (which I wouldn’t read, either), but I shall finish this with just a small, simple request: for acceptance of our difference(s).

As for why I wouldn’t read this myself… In spite of that popular cliché of the hyper-focused autistic computer genius, some of us just can’t do scrolling on a screen – or hyperlinks (I’ll leave that to the comms team), or pretty much any virtual environment, for that matter. So, although I have made a successful career out of my facility with language, I’d manage two paragraphs of this at most. It’s a frustrating perceptual limitation in an increasingly digital world.  However, I’ve just about learnt to accept it.

Oz Hardwick is a Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.