Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurological condition that affects the way people process information, interact with others, learn and behave.
Autism encompasses a wide range of traits that are often viewed as disorders, specifically when it comes to communication and social interactions. What many people fail to realize is communicating and interacting with others differently isn’t necessarily a disability.
A disability is defined as a physical or mental condition that may limit someone’s ability to perform certain actions, such as learning, moving, behaving appropriately and communicating effectively. In many cases, having a disability makes someone’s life more challenging and an individual may need some intervention, education and accommodation to allow them the same opportunities as able-bodied people.
In many cases of autism, people can be high-functioning, meaning they are more independent,expressing less severe symptoms and calling for less accommodation. Still, people with high-functioning autism tend to struggle significantly with social situations and communication, most of all because they have difficulties picking up on nonverbal cues, struggle to make eye contact and often have trouble understanding sarcasm, idioms or “hidden/implied meaning” in conversations.
Though these issues don’t generally impact their abilities in a practical sense, even people with high-functioning autism can find interactions like these difficult. Moreover, it can have a significant effect in other areas like social life and emotional health.
One common misconception about high-function autistic people is they are rude and don’t care about other people or the way they think. For this reason specifically, people who experience this side of ASD are still classified as having a disability because of the way society perceives them. The biggest problem these people deal with daily is feeling misunderstood and isolated from others because people are unwilling to be receptive to a different way of communication.
Similarly to how deaf people don’t consider themselves to have a disability, but rather a different way of communicating, people with high functioning autism communicate differently. Just like how you have to know sign language in order to communicate with a deaf person, you have to know how to modify your language in order to communicate effectively with an autistic person.
It’s important to understand that refusing to make eye contact, talking incessantly about one thing and misinterpreting sarcasm is not anti-social for an autistic person, but rather just the way that they tend to communicate.
Societally, the term “disability” has a negative connotation and is often associated with people who need specific assistance to perform everyday activities. If someone is “disabled” they may not have access to the same things as someone who isn’t disabled, and therefore they need intervention to have access to them.
This is not the case for high-functioning autism. Those who have this level of autism usually live perfectly normal lives in a practical sense, but the issues they face come from other people not understanding them. In this case, just like with deafness, the issue stems from society rather than the individual.
Natalie Andzik, a professor of special education, talked about this issue.
“The term ‘disability’ is a protection for our individuals with more significant autism,” Andzik said. “It provides a lot of resources and funding to have when your parents can no longer take care of you. I think that people with autism in the high-functioning group are more of a community; like how a deaf person would never say to you that they have a disability, it’s similar with people with autism. That’s what I would like to see for individuals with autism in the future.”
For now, identifying differences in others by classifying them and assigning a label is useful because it allows people with these differences to be treated fairly and provided with the proper accommodations. Historically, these differences were ignored, and many people with them were neglected, so we are headed in the right direction.
The thing is, many people with autism don’t require any accommodations, but just a person who is willing to listen and try to understand them. Giving them a disability label gives people an excuse to treat them differently and view them in a negative light, which can only make social interaction more difficult for them.
In the future, I hope people don’t need a label to be accommodated for and understood, and don’t need to be classified as “disabled” because of the way they view the world.
