Open Society

We need to plan for a future where millions of survivors are chronically ill

More Americans in and out of the labor force are having trouble remembering and concentrating, a common Covid-19 aftereffect.

Textio has found strong patterns of inequity in job performance feedback. This new data reveals major demographic biases by gender, race, and age. Read the full report.

From celebrity gossip to QAnon to COVID denialism, conspiracy thinking has become a hallmark of online public life. It’s up to us dig out the toxicity built into its very foundations, and put the focus back where it belongs: on people and community.

Few qualitative studies have explored the lives of autistic women diagnosed in adulthood, despite this knowledge being essential to inform awareness of the intersection of autism and gender. This s...

In this blog post, Charles Logan shares his thoughts, a reading guide, and new inquiry design model (IDM) lesson based on Audrey Watters’ 2021 book, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning.

This is the transcript of my keynote at the Digital Pedagogy Lab this morning. Except not really. It was a

I gave this keynote this morning at the ICLS Conference, not in Nashville as originally planned (which is a huge bummer as I really want some hot chicken)

via Music Teacher’s Helper The late 80s and 90s saw a new wave of punk and hard rock artists take over the alternative – and mainstream – scene. While these musicians represented …

I'm hoping to organise a third Blogging Against Disablism Day this May 1st. Shortly before the first BADD, I wrote a Brief Guide to the La...

Start here: If your school, university, business, government requires "proof of disability" - that is, diagnosis - before providing accommo...

Article. By James Baldwin. October 16, 1963. Baldwin addresses the challenges of education to prepare children to grapple with the myths and realities of U.S. history.

Just in the last two weeks, conservative advocacy groups published a “woke heat map” of Missouri’s schools to combat “socialism”, the Ohio…

What follows is not formal research.  It's very interesting, though.  On social media, one can ask questions of those who happen to be rea...

For as long as the autism and disability communities have existed, they have engaged in a robust conversation about labels. This ongoing conversation has been tied to deeper conversations about disabled people’s worth, needs, and rights. When OAR was founded in 2001, person-first language, which places the personhood of the individual before their disability, was

This is going to be one of my shorter articles – largely, I imagine, to be posted in reply to those who “correct” my language when I refer to myself or others as autistic, as

A look at the debate over first-person language and identity-first language.

Objectives Autistic people experience poor physical and mental health along with reduced life expectancy compared with non-autistic people. Our aim was to identify self-reported barriers to primary care access by autistic adults compared with non-autistic adults and to link these barriers to self-reported adverse health consequences. Design Following consultation with the autistic community at an autistic conference, Autscape , we developed a self-report survey, which we administered online through social media platforms. Setting A 52-item, international, online survey. Participants 507 autistic adults and 157 non-autistic adults. Primary and secondary outcome measures Self-reported barriers to accessing healthcare and associated adverse health outcomes. Results Eighty per cent of autistic adults and 37% of non-autistic respondents reported difficulty visiting a general practitioner (GP). The highest-rated barriers by autistic adults were deciding if symptoms warrant a GP visit (72%), difficulty making appointments by telephone (62%), not feeling understood (56%), difficulty communicating with their doctor (53%) and the waiting room environment (51%). Autistic adults reported a preference for online or text-based appointment booking, facility to email in advance the reason for consultation, the first or last clinic appointment and a quiet place to wait. Self-reported adverse health outcomes experienced by autistic adults were associated with barriers to accessing healthcare. Adverse outcomes included untreated physical and mental health conditions, not attending specialist referral or screening programmes, requiring more extensive treatment or surgery due to late presentations and untreated potentially life-threatening conditions. There were no significant differences in difficulty attending, barriers experienced or adverse outcomes between formally diagnosed and self-identified autistic respondents. Conclusions Reduction of healthcare inequalities for autistic people requires that healthcare providers understand autistic perspectives, communication needs and sensory sensitivities. Adjustments for autism-specific needs are as necessary as ramps for wheelchair users. Data are available upon reasonable request. All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

The problem is not autistic hand flapping, but the decision that hand flapping is annoying or weird, not natural (and adorable).

In this series on systems thinking, I share the key insights and tools needed to develop and advance a systems mindset for dealing with…

Examining our own use of ableist language is harder than criticizing a celebrity on social media.

Today’s young children are working more, but they’re learning less.

This open access book demonstrates the first historical overview of the autism rights branch of the neurodiversity movement, describing the activities and rationales of key leaders in their own words between 1992 and the present day since it organized into a unique community.

With a new short film, a handful of famous faces are using offbeat humor to question whether the needs of people with Down syndrome truly are "special."

Although euphemisms are intended to put a more positive spin on the words they replace, some euphemisms are ineffective. Our study examined the effectiveness of a popular euphemism for persons with disabilities, special needs. Most style guides prescribe ...

The social model of disability is a way of viewing the world which says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference.

Academics in disciplines such as law, history and the arts have the potential to make extensive contributions to the lives of people with autism.

...white rage through the most explosive periods in America’s racial history, which the reader comes to understand through the brutal clarity and consistent facts of the historical narrative.