Archive
11 posts · newest first
2026 · 11
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The cluster nobody maps for parents: AuDHD, EDS, POTS, MCAS, ARFID, and PMDD as one picture
Parents are sent to five specialists for what is, in autistic-led research and lived experience, one co-occurring cluster — connective-tissue, autonomic, immune, sensory, and endocrine dysregulation. An affirming operational parent map, honest about thin evidence.
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Autistic adulthood as infrastructure: employment, housing, and supported autonomy
Past the transition cliff, autistic adults fall out of the pediatric system into sparse, fragmented adult infrastructure. Autistic adulthood is an infrastructure problem — employment (IPS place-then-train), housing (community integration with funded supports), and supported decision-making vs guardianship — with autonomy as the design goal.
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The double-empathy problem lands in your pull requests
Autistic communication friction isn't a last-mile social-skills gap. Milton's double empathy problem reframes it as bidirectional — both neurotypes fail to read each other — and the fix is protocol design, not coaching the autistic person to mask.
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Race × autism: the diagnosis gap as a gatekeeping problem
Black and Brown autistic children are diagnosed later, misdiagnosed more often, and under-identified by the systems that gate access to support. A diagnosis is a credential — unequally issued — and the diagnosis gap is a credentialing-distribution problem, not a neutral clinical fact.
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Sleep, sensory regulation, and the body clock
Sleep is a top autistic research priority — and the dominant behaviorist sleep-training default treats it as noncompliance, when for many autistic people it's sensory and circadian. Sensory-first, circadian-first, behaviorism last. Honest about the genuinely thin evidence.
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The accommodation tax is a myth: neurodivergent-first design helps everyone (and the honest cases where it doesn't)
The accommodation-tax frame assumes designing for neurodivergent users costs the neurotypical majority something. Mostly that's a myth — neurodivergent-first design surfaces friction the majority was tolerating. But not always: the honest version names the genuine tradeoffs and answers them with universal design (options), not a single replaced default.
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What "neurodiversity at work" programs get wrong: assimilation sold as inclusion
Corporate neurodiversity programs recruit autistic people for narrow roles, measure success by whether they learn to mask, and call it inclusion. Real inclusion redesigns the workplace around autistic cognition, not the autistic employee around the workplace.
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Autistic burnout and the cost of masking, for knowledge workers (not the HR version)
Autistic burnout is a predictable output of sustained masking under a neurotypical-coded work rhythm, not a personal coping failure — and the standard corporate interventions make it worse. What actually helps, drawn from AASPIRE and the masking-cost literature.
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Disclosure in software workplaces, beyond the negativity bias
The biggest study yet of neurodivergent developers (n=493) finds disclosure outcomes are mostly positive — yet the forums that advise them run on negativity bias. Why social motivations beat accommodations, and what that changes for builders and managers.
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Learning design for neurodivergent learners
Most learning design is built for a neurotypical majority and then 'accommodates' everyone else. What changes when we start from neurodivergent cognition — for the autistic learner, the ADHD learner, and everyone else who benefits.
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What autistic people actually want researched
AutINSAR 2025 asked autistic people their research priorities. The answers — mental health, sensory processing, co-occurring conditions, autistic adulthood — are almost the opposite of where funding actually goes. A plain-language synthesis for parents and builders.