Jonathan’s is 6 years old and, according to mom, he shows improvement in his speech, brushing his teeth, getting ready for school and other daily living tasks. Mom is soooo proud of the strides that he has made this school year including fewer meltdowns. Ask Jonathan and he’ll tell you t…

A few years ago, I received a phone call from the mother of a young man with autism. She had just learned that her son, who was in his 20s, has a deletion in SHANK3, one of the genes my team discovered is mutated in some people with autism. I was surprised by her news because I had met her son and f…

By Megan Amodeo Who has the biggest house? The best car? The most intelligent children? The most athletic children? Sometimes it seems that we spend the majority of our days comparing ourselves with other people and their children. I’m sure we’ve all been compared with others at least once in our li…

About half of all people with autism also have intellectual disability. But a great deal of autism research is drawn almost exclusively from participants without intellectual disability, as my colleagues and I reported earlier this year1. And yet, the researchers tend to generalize the findings acro…

Teaching language skills is one of the most frequent needs for children with autism, but also one of the most misunderstood skillsets amongst both parents and practitioners. The desire to hear your learner speak in full sentences can be overwhelming, making it especially difficult to take a step bac…

LEGO recently launched Braille Bricks, an innovative educational product aimed at helping blind and visually impaired children learn Braille. These specialized LEGO bricks are part of a broader educational initiative that seeks to make the process of learning Braille more engaging and accessible. …

“We have been working with a behavior analyst and it seems like every time they give us a new behavior intervention things just get worse, not better. What gives?” Well, if you are working with a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, I’d like to believe that the interventions they are recommending for y…

One day last April, Damien Fair chuckled along with the members of his 30-person lab at their monthly lunch meeting as he attempted to maneuver a bowl of soup, a plate of salad and a pair of crutches all at the same time. The associate professor of behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health and Scienc…

Researchers have known that genes contribute to autism since the 1970s, when a team found that identical twins often share the condition. Since then, scientists have been racking up potential genetic culprits in autism, a process that DNA-decoding technologies have accelerated in the past decade. As…

By Gretchen McIntire In the last couple of days, I have been reflecting on the ways I have worked hard to be brave this year. A lot of my work has been emotional but some of it has involved a lot of unexpected changes. This year there were times when I worried I might run out of ways to be brave onl…

According to WHO, there are 285 million people worldwide that are visually impaired and 90% of this population lives in poverty. It goes without saying that visually impaired people face challenges on a daily basis. However, it is also refreshing to see makers and individuals out there building solu…

If you are a bus rider, you have probably occasionally missed your bus because you were standing just a few steps away from the bus stop, the bus approached, the driver thought you weren’t going to get on, and they drove off! (it’s happened to me for sure!) For the visually impaired, this is a…

If you're anything like most people, you have multiple voices in your head competing all at once for space. Some of them you like, so you welcome them out in the open. Others you want to keep hidden away. Not only do you not want others to see them, you don't even want to acknowledge them yourself. …

You never dreamed it would be like this. Now how do you make it stop?Source: The Autism Site