Schooling Metro on Autism

 Today's Philly edition of Metro features an article titled "Students with Autism grapple with challenges of virtual learning." Below is my letter responding to it.

Your article refers to "children who have autism or other intellectual disabilities." This is inaccurate because autism is not an intellectual disability.

Autism sometimes co-occurs with an intellectual disability, or with sensory processing issues that can interfere with learning (see for instance Types of Intellectual Disabilities: List and Examples | HealthyPlace). But autism itself is not an intellectual disability; in fact, some forms of autism tend to be associated with higher than average intelligence.

Autism is officially characterized as a developmental disorder but, like many other #ActuallyAutistic people, I consider this a biased description. If it's true that autistics often have difficulty reading the emotions of neurotypical (non-autistic) people, it's equally true that neurotypicals often fail to read the emotions of autistics. So it's more objective to describe autism as a neurological difference rather than as a disorder or disability.