Autism Awareness By Demonstration

by Dora Raymaker · 2009-02-27 09:51:00 UTC
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an abstract dot pattern is blurry in the back ground, a pair of eyeglasses is in the foreground, the abstract dot pattern is clear behind the lensesThe term "autism awareness" at this point makes me cringe like an abused dog expecting to be slapped. Too often "autism awareness" translates directly to, "a bunch of harsh, dehumanizing marketing telling the world that you are worthless trash." So I nearly didn't click on the link called Northern College Awareness Days puts focus on autism--but I'm glad I did.

It seems, from the story at least, that Northern College in Canada has taken "awareness" to mean "awareness of a perspective besides your own," and has been doing disability "awareness days" for the past 20 years, including this clever exercise:

Throughout the morning, about 39 teams will gather in the college's main foyer for the beginning of the wheelchair rally, which takes able-bodied people through a course in the college in attempts to complete challenges and win points for their team.

"It really opens their minds," Frappier said. "Going up and down a ramp, someone without a disability might take this for granted, but when you're in a wheelchair it's a little different.

"A majority of the challenges are related to autism, but there are some related to other disabilities."

This is no small event either--Northern College is expecting about 200 people.

I wish there were more details about the types of challenges related to autism planned--would the challenges be similar to the simulations of yada4schools? I do hope so. I do hope it's as perspective-enhancing as the wheelchair piece, and not just a bunch of advertisements about how terrible people like me are.

I wish even more for the term "autism awareness" lose its more current sense of "look at what a nasty horrible problem autistic people are" and start being used more commonly in the sense of "see what it's like to be be an autistic person." Only with the latter can mutual understanding and communication be built.

Dora Raymaker
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