I am about to open an online survey for my graduate thesis research project, Autism Disclosure in the Workplace. If anyone would like to find out specifics, just send me a private message.
What I've found out so far is that people on the autism spectrum seem to be present in the workforce in about the same numbers as the general population. The high numbers for under-and unemployment for auties and aspies doesn't seem to have any real basis. Not from the research I've been doing for the past few months. And I've been looking hard.
It looks to me that autistic people basically aren't treated very well and that can affect whether or not they tell anyone that they're on the autism spectrum. If you don't give an official diagnosis to your employer, you can't ask for official accommodations. And it looks like some people, maybe many people, get along by getting their accommodations unofficially- by telling people they trust or by doing favors and getting accommodations in return. These are just my initial findings. I won't know anything else until people take the survey and tell me about their experiences. There isn't much in the way of narrative experiences of any sort in academia from autistic people, especially adults.
12 Jun 2015, 1:06 pm
