Author: Marco Lombardi, Department of Social Educational Care Work and Researcher at Equality Research Collective, Hogent University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Ghent, Belgium.
Social Lives
Since its establishment in 2007, World Autism Awareness Day has grown up. It began as a celebrative day to facilitate acknowledgment of persons with Autism and the recognitions of supports enable participation in society. A few years have passed and the awareness of persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has increased. The improvement has brought greater visibility, respect and access to treatments. Guidelines have been developed worldwide and more personalized supports have been tailored and delivered for pupils and teenagers. As the awareness grow up, persons with ASD have grown too. This growing awareness has revealed different barriers to the participation to society, especially for adults, that have not been considered at earlier ages.
The awareness regarding persons with ASD has taken different views and perspectives broadening to different areas or domains.
• 2012: “Launch of Official UN “Awareness Raising” Stamp”
• 2013: “Celebrating the ability within the disability of autism”
• 2014: “Opening Doors to Inclusive Education”
• 2015: “Employment: The Autism Advantage”
• 2016: “Autism and the 2030 Agenda: Inclusion and Neurodiversity”
• 2017: “Toward Autonomy and Self-Determination”
• 2018: “Empowering Women and Girls with Autism”
• 2019: “Assistive Technologies, Active Participation”
• 2020: “The Transition to Adulthood”[19]This year world Autism awareness day is dedicated
This year (2021) current theme became “the inclusion in the workspace” .
The legal recognition of persons with disabilities has improved since the entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Rights for Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2008. The CRPD stressed the need to further protect persons in a socially vulnerable situation, as their rights have been frequently violated. Since then, Human Rights have become a powerful instrument to protect persons with disabilities. However, human rights treaties and their ratification are not enough to ameliorate life conditions. There is a specific need to implement policies at different levels to transform society (Verdugo et al., 2016).
The preliminary and fundamental step of recognizing the importance of Human Rights would permit to increase Quality of Life for persons with disabilities and persons with ASD once implemented. For this reason, today’sgreat challenge calls for implementation of the present rights to lead to an improvement of personal Quality of Life (Lombardi, et al., 2019; Gomez et al., 2020).
From the point of view of intended outcome, the autism awareness day presents a variety of contents in different Quality of life domains (using the Shalock and Verdugo model).
| Autism Awareness Day Theme of the Year | Quality of Life Domain Outcomes |
| “Launch of Official UN “Awareness Raising” | Rights |
| “Celebrating the ability within the disability of autism” | Personal Development |
| “Opening Doors to Inclusive Education” | Personal Development & Social Inclusion |
| “Employment: The Autism Advantage” | Material Well-being & Social Inclusion |
| “Autism and the 2030 Agenda: Inclusion and Neurodiversity” “Toward Autonomy and Self-Determination” | Social Inclusion Self- Determination |
| “Empowering Women and Girls with Autism” | Rights |
| “Assistive Technologies, Active Participation” | Social Inclusion, Physical & Emotional Well-being |
| “The Transition to Adulthood” | Self- Determination & Rights |
| “Inclusion in the Workplace” | Social Inclusion |
We may see an evolution of focus from the pure perspective on awareness and rights, to the one of personal development, well-being, self-determination and social inclusion. As persons with ASD have grown, their needs and the focus of awareness has grown as well. A pragmatic approach to achieve personal, organizational and societal quality of life outcomes would look for connection with existing laws and shared objectives such as the CRPD and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
In particular, this year’s theme links Article 27 of the CRPD to recognize “the right of persons with disabilities to work, on an equal basis with others,” and to a “work environment that is open, inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities” with SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth – “to promote full and productive employment and decent work for all, including persons with disabilities.” In 2021 we have experienced a global challenge, in a suddenly changed world dealing with the global pandemic. Employment on the edge of a global recession is a priority for governments worldwide and this is even more relevant for persons with ASD. Frequently positions for persons with disabilities are easily cut first during a time of recession creating wider gaps for a potential inclusive society.
The COVID 19 scenario also created new labor forms and new opportunities such as remote working, the wide spread use of new accessible technologies and greater use of electronically collected datasets. For this reason, the sudden increase in use of information and communications technology may become, on one hand, a facilitator to overcome the barrier for employees on ASD who found it hard to work in a traditional working space and to create new employment opportunities, and on the other hand an improvement in terms of Quality of Life for the whole population.
The vigilance to reduce the impact of the job loss for persons with ASD should be high, focusing at the same time on new employment forms using the right support strategies and elements to promote an open inclusive setting. The concept of supports to fulfill needs to participate in typical human activities is a great challenge, but a game changer. Providing the right supports to the right person to take part in the normal activities in the typical life environment would move civilization towards a participative culture and a more equal society. There is a global opportunity in a world that has digitally changed as never before during the last year to promote an increment of Quality of Life for the whole population. History has already shown that supports created for persons with functioning limitations (such as touchscreens, vocal recognition, accessible transports, etc.) became an improvement for the whole population. The new challenge is to increase awareness for the creation of a sustainable inclusive workspace. This transformation requires us all to call for commitment from policy makers, employers and workers to take the right steps towards a more just and open society.