Is autism a disability?

Transcript

 The medical model of disability is saying like disability is a problem in the person that needs to be fixed. And the social model of disability is saying disability is a mismatch between the person, what the person's brain and body needs, and what the environment is providing.

And so it's not that being autistic is bad necessarily, it's that we are a minority. It's rare, and so the world is set up for, you know, to give support in the areas that are challenging for neurotypical people and assuming that everybody's good at the same things that neurotypical people are good at. And so, autistic people, we have our own strengths and challenges that are usually different from most people's, but the world, you know, workplaces and schools and everything are just usually not set up for that because we are the minority.

But the reality is if most people were autistic, then the schools and the workplaces and everything would be structured very differently, and the neurotypical people would probably be having a, a hard time with that. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. It means that you deserve credit for the fact that you're fighting an uphill battle against a world that's not set up for, you know, what works best for you.

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