In The Politics of Autism, I write about special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.If you go to http://www.idea.ed.gov, it redirects tohttps://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/osers/osep/osep-idea.html with this note: “The servers hosting our idea.ed.gov website are experiencing technical issues. As we work to resolve this issue, information regarding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act can be found below.”One workaround is to go…

via IDEA Website Troubles — Autism Policy and Politics

I received a message this morning, letting me know about an article on the FaceBook page of the Department of Education and Training in Queensland’s Autism Hub. The article is upsetting in a number of ways. It contains misinformation, stereotyping, lots of negative language, and lots of blaming autistic people for their parents unhappiness and […]

via A severe problem —

[image description: a small campfire burning in the dark night. Copyright Sparrow R. Jones, 2017] Everywhere I turn, it seems, someone is calling the current United States presidential administration “crazy” or “insane.” Do you not realize that these are slurs along the lines of The R Word? Do you not realize that everything I have…

via Stop “Diagnosing” Donald Trump — Unstrange Mind

Many posts have discussed Trump’s support for the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. (He also has a bad record on disability issues more generally.) The story that Trump might appoint anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head a presidential commission — whether on vaccines or autism — has provoked widespread reactions.Laurie Garrett writes at Newsday:Given Trump’s interest in Russia, he might be interested to know that the first claims of an association among…

via Autism, Vaccines, and Trump: The Hits Keep Coming — Autism Policy and Politics