N E W S
Updated: 24-Dec-01
News does not reflect or imply InternAUT views. Links marked
open in new window.
Pretending to be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome -- Liane Holliday Willey describes her life with AS from the inside.
Autism and Asperger Syndrome, by Uta Frith -- the standard work on AS. Including Hans Asperger's original paper.
M E N U
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InternAUT (formerly International Autism Day) is a new international Autism
self-advocacy organisation with its base on the Internet.
We seek to empower people on the autistic
spectrum through developing advocacy efforts, educating
the public about autism, and bringing autistic people
in touch with each other via cyberspace or other means.
Our premises and goals are outlined in a
paper
for the Society for Disability Studies. In short, our
goals include:
- to increase public awareness about autism and about the fact that autistics
are whole and valuable persons;
- to provide a chance for autistics to meet and get in touch
with each other, either through the Internet, in "real life", or by any other means;
- initiating a process of advocacy and emancipation of autistic people.
InternAUT is a grassroots initiative, not affiliated with any particular person or organisation. Anyone interested may join us by subscribing to the a-day mailing list where we discuss and brainstorm the ongoings. This is how InternAUT projects come into being.
Apart from increasing public awareness about autism, one of the most important goals of InternAUT is the emancipation of autistic people. We know that there are many people in the autistic spectrum who have been involuntarily locked up in mental hospitals and drugged up, while simply meeting and communicating with other autistics for support and for increasing self-awareness and self-acceptance would most probably be enough to alleviate their fears and anxieties that cause the "inappropriate behaviors" that they were locked up for. What is needed is a support network for and by people in the autistic spectrum. Several Internet groups have already started a trend in this direction, and InternAUT wants to extend this trend around the world. See Project Cyberspace 2000 in the projects section.