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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This is a list of current projects being undertaken by the various
participants of the InternAUT project.
All of these are individual initiatives that will be carried out
in the team spirit of the group behind InternAUT.
Your project could be here also!
- Independent Living on the Autistic Spectrum (InLv)
Status: Successfully operational.
Running since July 1996, this e-mail based support group provides support to people on the autistic spectrum, and interested parents, family, professionals and friends. The recognition of the autistic way of being as valid is essential to this group. The atmosphere encourages members to build an identity as valuable autistic people with specific strengths and not only weaknesses. InLv aims at reducing the marginalisation and dismissal autistics experience in society by providing an opportunity to communicate in the way that works best for many autistics: e-mail through the Internet. Specifically we aim at the following goals:
- To encourage world-wide self-advocacy
- Exchange of information between members
- Emotional support and friendship between members
InLv now has well over 120 fully introduced members from all over the world, the majority of whom are on the autistic spectrum. InLv has received publicity in various places, including the New York Times of June 30, 1997. InLv is sponsored by Fog City Software who generously donated a copy of their LetterRip listserver to run it on.
- Link to InLv homepage with member essays and directions on how to join.
- Link to the article about InLv in the New York Times of June 30, 1997. (Sign up for free at the website to access.)
- Link to Fog City Software.
Project manager: Martijn Dekker <martijn@inlv.demon.nl>
- InternAUT Newswire
Status: Operational. Volunteers wanted.
The goal of this project is to provide a central point where anyone can access relevant news about the autism spectrum, with a political, self-advocacy slant to it. This is done by:
- Writing and publishing exclusive InternAUT news stories.
- Searching the Web for autism news published in other media, and linking to it.
- Integrating the news service into the InternAUT site, encouraging visitors to take notice of other InternAUT projects as well.
Project manager: Martijn Dekker <martijn@inlv.demon.nl>
- CyberSpace 2000
Status: On hold until further notice.
Autistic people have not really been communicating with each other at all until the Internet became accessible to the general public. Experience on e-mail groups run by and for autistic people, such as InLv and ANI-L, shows that the relative anonymity and safety of a medium such as Internet e-mail unlocks communication capabilities that no one, including themselves, suspected were even there. Many people in the autistic spectrum report an increased self-confidence, acceptance of who they are, and general happiness when they have been communicating with people like themselves, who naturally understand everything that the "real" world surrounding them dismisses as "weird" or "inappropriate". We believe that the Internet is an essential means for autistic people to improve their lifes, because it is often the only way they can communicate effectively. Therefore, InternAUT is trying to initiate a project called CyberSpace 2000, to get as many people in the autistic spectrum hooked up to the Internet by the year 2000. Would you like to work on this in your region? We need volunteers world-wide to spin this off, and InternAUT would be the ideal occasion to do it. Click "How to join!" on the left if you wish to get involved.CNN has an excellent story about used computers that are very good deals. The machine described in the quote below would be perfect to get people on the Net. (07-Jun-97)
"Probably the most popular system we sell is a used 486 machine, probably three years old, with 66 MHz, 16 MB of RAM, 540 MB to one gigabyte drive, slow CD-ROM and a modem," Donn Wagner of Datapath said. Such a system costs between $500 and $650, with monitor included.
Project manager: Gavin Simpson <a203@amug.org>