Today is Autistics Speaking Day. Why? This is why. From our archives. Corina Becker autisticsspeakingday.blogspot.com It started sometime mid-October 2010. I was browsing the internet, following links off of Twitter to new places I hadn’t been, when something caught my eye. A new autism awareness campaign, it advertised itself as a way to raise money for charities around the world and for people to understand autism better. Curious, and ignoring the growing dread in the pit of my stomach, I clicked the link and took a look. What I found was Communication Shutdown, an event started by a group in Australia that promoted people to refrain from going on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for one day, November 1st. It said that it would help people to understand the communication difficulties that people with autism struggle with, and this will help people to know autism better. Also,…
Tag: Autistics Speaking Day
And you really need to go to the Autistics Speaking Day website to see all the amazing posts that have already been put up, as and also following the @AutisticsSpeak Twitter stream. TPGA Contributor & Self-Advocate Lydia Wayman, representing. For those who would like history as to why this day matters so, please read ASDay co-founder Corina Becker’s TPGA Post The Beginnings of Autistics Speaking Day. Contribute contribute contribute! Spread the word! Boost the signal! Be as loud as your or your hands can be!
Liz Ditz www.ThinkingAutismGuide.com The first-ever Autistics Speaking Day was in 2010, and was organized by Corina Lynn Becker, assisted by Kathryn Bjørnstad. The stimulus was a fundraising proposal by an Australian public-relations organization asking neurotypicals to refrain from using social media for one day, which they called “Communication Shutdown”, and which they claimed would “encourage empathy for people with autism who find social communication a challenge. Corina was appalled. As she wrote on her blog, in the post Real Communication Shutdown ….this is supposed to help simulate the communication difficulties that Autistic people face. I’m sorry, but no. Just no. Through October 2010, Corina continued to write and tweet about her opposition to “Communication Shutdown”, and Autistics Speaking Day was born — and went viral, with over a hundred posts from autistics and autistic allies, and uncounted tweets with the hashtag #ASDay. In September 2011, Corina published The Beginnings of…
Corina Becker autisticsspeakingday.blogspot.com It started sometime mid-October last year. I was browsing the internet, following links off of Twitter to new places I hadn’t been, when something caught my eye. A new autism awareness campaign, it advertised itself as a way to raise money for charities around the world and for people to understand autism better. Curious, and ignoring the growing dread in the pit of my stomach, I clicked the link and took a look. What I found was Communication Shutdown, an event started by a group in Australia that promoted people to refrain from going on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for one day, November 1st. It said that it would help people to understand the communication difficulties that people with autism struggle with, and this will help people to know autism better. Also, for a $5 donation, people would get a charitable app to…