"Autism: Propaganda v. Reality." A presentation to the A-Team advocacy group this morning by Jill Escher, president of NCSA. Jill discusses the crusade to neuter terms around autism and intellectual disability, and the need for accurate language. It's not about semantics, she says, it's about consequences.
21 minutes (pardon some little glitches here and there).
Jill Escher is president of the National Council on Severe Autism and the mother of two children with nonverbal forms of autism. Through the Escher Fund for Autism she promotes and funds research on the genetic toxicology of autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions, and she has served on the governing council of the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society, where she co-chairs its Germ Cell and Heritable Effects special interest group. She was president of Autism Society San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2019 and, through her family business, Claradon Properties, provides housing to adults with developmental disabilities in the Bay Area. See more of her work at jillescher.com.
