Sutherland: Who gets to be the expert? Who gets to speak for the autistic people? Sustained self-advocacy is often very difficult for autistic people with high support needs. Very important to center the #neurodiversity and double empathy problem paradigms. #INSAR2025 - ThreadSky

thinkingautism.com • 4 days ago

Sutherland: Who gets to be the expert? Who gets to speak for the autistic people? Sustained self-advocacy is often very difficult for autistic people with high support needs.

Very important to center the #neurodiversity and double empathy problem paradigms.

#INSAR2025

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thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Now: AAC user and UW college student Grant Blasko and Dr. Vikram Jaswal.

Blasko, via AAC: He is trying to broaden his understanding of complex issues, grateful to be included and for support of fellow panel members.

Jaswal works at UVA on communication in folks like Blasko.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Blasko and Jaswal: Why is this panel happening? Well, some people here don't understand how autistic with HSNs can participate, and don't understand the #neurodiversity paradigm.

Previous panelists talked about how to include autistic people with HSNs successfully in research.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Blasko and Jaswal: Questions & commentary:

How do we make CBPR (community based participatory research) possible for autistic people with the highest support needs? Because it's the right thing to do morally, ethically, and scientifically.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Blasko and Jaswal: Important to presume competence, have intentional and ongoing conversations about power sharing, and ensure that accessibility is "baked in" to all research efforts involving autistic people with the highest support needs.

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Blasko and Jaswal: To truly participate in research, autistic people with HSNs, we need to support their:

Communication skills
Critical thinking
Collaboration
Self-advocacy

#INSAR2025

thinkingautism.com•4 days ago

Blasko: We talked for a long time about the barriers to inclusion for autistics with HSNs. Researchers need to develop the skills to do it. We need less gatekeeping, and to dismantle that power imbalance. Researchers needs to provide better access. I hope we are patient with each other.

#INSAR2025

autisticenough.bsky.social•3 days ago

And w/o denigrating the urgency of HSN people’s needs, mostly speaking autistics like me lose speech more frequently than non-autistics may think. However short my periods of speech loss may be, at those times my self-advocacy skills dip too.

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