So, as you may be aware, Google and Autism Speaks recently announced a partnership to further research into the genomics of autism. Autism Speaks, if you’ve never heard of them, are a supposed charity for autism advocacy – except the vast majority of autistic people don’t support them. This website has more information, but the long and short of it is that:
-They support eugenics.
-They speak over and ignore autistic people.
-They only spend about 3-4% of their budget on actually helping.
-They demonise autistic people, such as in their video I Am Autism.
Last night (June 12th, 2014 (BST)), Google announced #GCPOfficeHours, and invited people to tweet them. Naturally, autistic people and supporters took to Twitter to protest. What did Google do? They ignored all of us. Despite the tag being filled with pretty much nothing but autistic people tweeting about the Google/A$ partnership, Google didn’t respond to anyone, or acknowledge any of us.
So I decided to write a letter.
Writing, Learning, and Asperger's 