Earlier this week I made this series of six videos, covering four focus areas for advocacy:

  1. Paradigm
  2. Health
  3. Communication
  4. The UN Convention on the Rights of People With Disabilities (CRPD)

They are my four focus areas for advocacy, which doesn’t mean that they are the priority areas which everyone else should have.

I made the videos in response to a request from a professional in the AAC industry, to provide some “autistic insight” for their staff training — hence deadline-driven rush. I’m not an AAC expert.

The videos deal with some of the things I typically address in workshops, conferences and training events, and on social media. I provide a short overview of each topic with a few zoomed-in examples. In the actual workshops (on health particularly), I often add in topics like camouflaging and suicide risk, and sex+gender+sexuality, but I prefer other autistic co-presenters to cover those topics. In the communication section, I then typically also include material provided by non-speakers. I also often talk about friendship and building community.

Each video is an unscripted and uncut first take. I may revise and re-take them at some point when our studio is rebuilt. I apologise for the quality of sound, and definitely also for not pausing often enough. Right now I don’t intend to caption these — I’ll leave that for the studio versions.

PART 1 – Introduction

 

PART 2 – Paradigm

 

PART 3 – Health

 

PART 4 – Communication

 

PART 5 – CRPD

 

PART 6 – Conclusion

 

If you have some suggestions for improvement, please send me a message.