by Jo Lacy
(they / them), Acoustic Consultant, Miller Goodall Ltd
How aware of autism are you? There will be autistic people in your life, whether you know it or not. As a member of the Institute of Acoustics, I can almost guarantee that you’ll know someone who is autistic because, after all, autism is colloquially termed “the engineers disease”. This week (commencing 27th March 2023) is autism acceptance week which culminates on Sunday 2nd April with Autism Awareness Day and this year, the theme is colour.
You may have heard it said that autism is a spectrum, and it is true. The trouble comes when people say “We’re all a little bit autistic”, because that is categorically NOT true. In the image attached, there are 84 shades of green between bluey-greens and yellow-greens. If you’re red, you don’t share anything in common with green – they’re completely separate colours and you’re either red or you’re green. BUT, you can be red with a bit of yellow, or red with a bit of blue. It is not to say that you’re a little bit autistic (green), but you may share traits common to autism (blue or yellow) while being a vibrant red.
Autistic brains and neurotypical brains are different, your black windows pc does not work with silver apple software. Both are PCs but they are fundamentally different and this is something that I have found is frequently missed by people without a great deal of experience or understanding of autism.
If you’re not autistic, you may never fully understand the experience of being autistic. Equally, I know that I’ll never understand how a neurotypical brain works. There are some things that I do better than any neurotypical person I’ve ever met (recording studios typically use apple computers) but there are things that they do that I simply cannot comprehend (PC gaming anyone?).
Autism awareness isn’t about showing that autistic people are better than neurotypical people and it isn’t about pointing out where autistic people have struggles. It’s about being non-judgemental and open to learning about each other’s differences and accepting that everyone is different and that IT IS GOOD TO BE DIFFERENT.
After all, if there was no differentiation, none of us would ever exist. Time couldn’t exist because everything would exist in an infinitesimally small and dense speck of nothing-ness. The presence of matter and vacuum was the first difference, and it allowed for the formation galaxies, stars, planets and life itself. So this year, lets take a moment to stop and admire the beauty of the world around us. There is something beautiful in everyone and everything, if we can only find the right way to look at it and accept that sometimes it may take a little while to find.
If you’d like to know more about this year’s events for World Autism Acceptance Week, arranged in the UK by the National Autistic Society, please head over to their website www.autism.org.uk or directly to the event page on their website at https://www.autism.org.uk/get-involved/raise-money/world-autism-acceptance-week-2023. It’s time to embrace the colour in our lives that is so frequently lacking.
