Autism: Why Understanding, Inclusion and Acceptance Matters to Shea Hunter Belsky

somebody who isn't. They don't act anything like you and when I think about shattering stereotypes, shattering expectations, the number one thing that comes to my mind and what matters to me is telling my perspective, telling my story about autism, but not, turning off or not putting down other people's perspectives of autism that are all valid. Because if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. And just because I act, behave, or communicate.

In one way, being autistic, that doesn't mean that how other people who are autistic is suddenly invalid or wrong because autism has a lot of different representations, appearances. I happen to be a good communicator, but I do have sensory issues and some social issues with how my brain works and operates with the world around me. But communicating, articulating my thoughts is not one of those issues, but for some people. That can be the biggest issue.

Some autistic people are nonverbal and rely on a tablet, like an iPad or an Android tablet to communicate with the world around them. Whether they are, typing things out, if they have icons that, or sounds that represent their emotions or how they're feeling. Different autistic people have the ability or lack an ability to communicate the way that you and I are talking right now and what, matters to me about that. Is saying, Hey, like I am one person. This is my story.

But there are infinite numbers of possible stories of autistic people who are out there, and no one of them is more or less invalid or valid than the next. We are all unique individuals with unique sets of support needs, unique strengths, and a uniqueness about us throughout the world

that we live in. So how did you come into that? So what, how and when were you first diagnosed? I was diagnosed at two years old. I had many support services in school. I had IEP, sp, physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, psychiatrist. I had everything. And when I was younger, I wasn't really like self aware of myself. I was struggling with things and I had a hard time articulating them.

But it wasn't until I became a senior in high school that I started to find my voice to be able to articulate when something in my environment was causing me discomfort or to be dysregulated and from senior year of high school, when I went to Cornell University, I started to really become much more aware of these are environments, or this is a situation where I feel like I'm okay, I can thrive, or other places where I might be struggling or having a difficult time.

Being able to balance my emotions or balance what I am

feeling. And that was important to me to be able to find my voice, and not only that, but be able to talk about how my brain was operating and what other people could understand because I think I. It's one thing to have the words in my mind that I understand and it's never for other people to be able to hear you and be able to do something about it.

If I say this, if I'm going to a party with somebody and I say, Hey, like I need to step out to catch a breath of fresh air, I'm not feeling comfortable. That's an easy thing for them to understand. It's rarely a question that if I needed breath of fresh air, and that could be for any number of reasons. Autism does not have to be one of those reasons.

It's harder to make a change if I don't know what has to be changed, and some of those changes are easier than others. Sometimes it's just leave the environment. If it was as easy as that all the time, everything would be easy, but it's not always that straightforward. So

Everybody at some point in their lives is going to either have a disability or will be very close to somebody who is, and they will be affected by that, whether they realize it or not. Whether you break your leg and you're on crutches, that's accessibility. You will not be able to take the stairs or go up a steep hill. You need an escalator, you need a ramp, you need something to help you move around and people don't.

Always understand this and what I've been doing for the last couple of years is educating people in ways that they understand that, in ways that are actionable to them, not just me telling people.

This is about me, but going a step further, this is why it matters because you already have employees at your company who are neurodivergent, who have disabilities and may be struggling to express their needs, express their concerns, because they don't feel as though they have the environment within which they can do that. And over the last couple of years, I've been really focusing on that, helping companies understand. Not just why this matters, but how you can actually do something about it.

Empowering decision makers and empowering non-decision makers to become stronger allies and advocates and decision makers in this regard. Because I think some people, always want to do something, but not everybody can do something, and so what can't you do if you can't do a whole lot?

Part of that is me being able to self-regulate others is them having an awareness of how I articulate things might be a little bit different than how what they're expecting. and that applies to people who are neurodivergent too. Not everybody who has ADHD has the exact same set of characteristics or support needs. The ADHD can appear in different ways. Same for dyslexia, same for anxiety or depression or other things.

Under neurodiversity, everything is a little bit different and lumping people all into one bucket and saying, these are all the same kind of person does significant harm to what the needs of neuro divergent and people everywhere.

And there's also a greater social awareness of that for social media. My social media is filled with people who talk about neurodiversity very candidly and plainly. 20 years ago when I was growing up, there was still a lot of mystery to neurodiversity and the world was not as well connected as it is today, and I think.

Had I had like more autistic friends growing up, I might have grown up differently than how I did right now because I would've had broader access to people who I could have empathized, whoever could have emphasized with me. That was something that I wish that I'd had growing up and did not have as much of.

But I'm really happy that Loretta Virgin kids today are able to much more easily find comradery and empathy and understanding from others who know what they're going through and can be very specific about it.

you. All right, so let's get to the speed round. And so the speed round, I'm gonna list out some topics. They're actually all Wikipedia topics, so they have to be a certain format and you're gonna say matters. Meaning the topic has, it is on your radar. It has some importance to you right now and not matters. it's not really on your radar. It's not it's that it's bad and you're, it's not, doesn't matter to somebody.

It just doesn't matter to you at this moment or just skip and try not to skip too much because if you think about it, please, things either really matters or not matters. Skip is more for you don't really know what that is or you're not sure you wanna think about it, that kind of a thing.

I think it has the potential to get to that level, but it's not like palm of your hand level yet, like chat GPT and smartphones are, and until it gets to the point where it's easy, powerful, and cheap people to use, it's not going to get anywhere.

And I played with those before and that I think is a little bit less gimmicky, a little bit more practical, but it's the kind of expensive, like $500 for a pair of sunglasses. Not what I'm gonna spend in the moment. But it's, cool. It's interesting. It is more practical than VR for