Guest Post: Am I Autistic?

This week is my blog's very first guest post, so it's something I've been excited about sharing. It's by my online friend Kayleigh Hyland of Kayleigh And Her Friends. Kayleigh focuses on a range of subjects, most notably body positivity and sharing inspirational and positive stories from many others who she meets online. You can check out her own blog here, and also find her on Twitter and Instagram as kayleighann88 and kayleighandherfriends respectively. Of course you can find me in all the usual places online, but this post isn't about me so without further ado, I'll let Kayleigh take it away:

Am I Autistic?

I’ve asked myself this question since I found out what Autism was. There are traits that I see in myself which mirror the traits that put you on ‘The spectrum’.

I struggle with breaking routine and like things to have an order, I also have anxious and obsessive compulsive behaviours. Though in themselves these disorders are not typical of people with Autism, they are more common than in the average person. I can also struggle to concentrate when there is a lot going on at the same time and if I’m into something, like a TV program for example, I will talk/think about it a lot until I replace it with something else.

However, I do not struggle with social cues, in fact I have a better understanding of body language than most people.

I maintain good eye contact and I can differentiate between when someone is being ironic and when they are serious.

I think this is why there is a spectrum as a lot of us will find that we relate to a number of the behaviours even though we are not diagnosed as Autistic.

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Head Canon: Is Everest Autistic?

Everybody has fictional characters that they feel a connection to and find that they relate to a lot more than others. Sometimes a character is written and/or portrayed in a certain way that is deemed by fans to be an indicator (whether deliberate or not) of certain attributes such as autism for example. There are a number of characters that autistics seem to widely relate to, and of course some that only a few relate to. While it's not a game that I've ever played there's a character called Symmetra from Overwatch who many fans had speculated was autistic. The creators of the game later confirmed that the speculation is correct and that Symmetra is indeed autistic.

As a dad of 2 I don't have a lot of time to watch TV, but one of the things we do watch a lot of is Paw Patrol. I could absolutely be either right or wrong here, but I've got a theory that if any members of the Paw Patrol are autistic it's Everest. For anybody unfamiliar with Paw Patrol, Everest is the Siberian Husky who is an expert in mountain/snow and ice missions. She's always been my favourite of the pups but I've always put it down to her being a Husky, which is a breed I've always liked because of their wolf-like appearance. But recently I've started to wonder if there's more to it and I've noticed that she has a few traits that could be considered autistic. Admittedly spotting these traits is a bit difficult because she's not one of the 6 main/original pups so she's not in too many episodes, but here are the few that I've spotted without deliberately going through each of her appearances with a fine-toothed comb.

She doesn't seem to understand metaphors and non-standard speech. The first example comes in her first episode The New Pup where she joins the Paw Patrol after meeting and looking after Jake while he's stranded in the Antarctic. At one point Jake tells Everest that she rocks, to which her response is to assume that it's a good thing and then starts singing "I rock! I rock! I rock!" before she pauses to ask "Wait, what kind of rock am I?" Jake tells her he'll explain on the way to her igloo, which he presumably does because at the very end of the episode she tells the rest of the pups that "Paw Patrol rocks!" There's another episode, Pups & A Whale Of A Tale, where she's confused by Captain Turbot (who regularly - and annoyingly - speaks in alliteration) when he explains that there's a baby whale separated from it's mum under the ice. She gets the gist of it as she repeats it in simple terms but she does that to check she's understanding him right, whereas most of the time everyone else understands him straight away.

Going back to her debut episode The New Pup, Everest indicates at least a couple of times that she loves rescuing people. To be honest I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about it that comes across to me as an autistic special interest. It may just be the number of times she mentions it in the episode, but it's worth mentioning when considering if she's autistic.

In the episode Pups Get Skunked, Everest is actually the only pup who gets "skunked" when a skunk sprays her in the face causing her to stink, which repulses the rest of the Paw Patrol. This one is particularly relatable for me because my sense of smell is hyposensitive (meaning it's weaker than most people's sense of smell). Everest seems to have a similar hyposensitivity because she doesn't think it smells much and can't understand why the rest of the pups are behaving the way they are. Similarly, she doesn't seem to be sensitive to the cold at all but that could just be because of where she lived for presumably all of her life until she met Jake, and also because of her breed she's designed to withstand the cold with a big fluffy coat.

Speaking of Jake, the 2 of them live together in a cabin near the mountain, away from the rest of the Paw Patrol. Previously to that she was living on her own in an igloo in the Antarctic. This screams autism to me because most autistics have such a lack of social interest and prefer living either alone or just with someone who they're very, very close to like Jake is to Everest. As far as I know it's not clear what happened to Everest's family, or why she was living alone prior to meeting Jake, but it's definitely food for thought when looking from a neurodiversity point of view.

The final thing I noticed is in the episode The Pups' Winter Wonder Show. Everest is driving with Tracker during a blizzard when Tracker asks how she can see where she's going. Everest replies with "I can get around Adventure Bay blindfolded." This comes across as an autism sign to me because she met the Paw Patrol in series 2, and The Pups' Winter Wonder Show was only in series 3. Add that to the fact that she's been spending the majority of her time in Jake's cabin away from Adventure Bay and it makes me wonder if she's some form of savant with the ability to rapidly memorise maps or routes. I once saw a video online a few years ago where an autistic artist took a single helicopter flight around New York and then was able to accurately draw the skyline completely from memory. I think Everest being able to navigate around Adventure Bay without seeing where she's going may be a similar thing.

Those are all of my reasons for suspecting that Everest is autistic, and if I'm honest it actually makes a lot more sense written down than it did in my head! Next time you're watching your favourite shows, playing your favourite games or reading your favourite books, why not see if you can spot any undertones in your favourite characters? It doesn't even have to be autism - it can be anything! If this post has been interesting for you please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: A black silhouette of a head with a white silhouette of a cannon in the brain area. Under the head silhouette are the words "Autism Had Canon" with "Autsim" in rainbow colours and "Head Canon" in black.]

Survey Results

Thanks to all who took part in my autism survey during World Autism Awareness Week! There were 21 responses to it, which isn't as many as I'd hoped for but the results were interesting and I'm pleased to report them here in this post for you. Just as a reminder, these were the questions:

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Are you/anyone you know autistic?
4. If yes, who?
5. What is your understanding of autism?
6. Is autism a disability?
7. Which of these terms are you familiar with? (there were several options including stimming, meltdown, alexithymia etc.)
8. Is there anything that you think autistic people can't do?
9. Is there anything that you think autistic please can do better than others?
10. What autism stereotypes are you aware of?

One of the most interesting things I've noticed from it is that all but 1 answered yes to being/knowing someone who is autistic. The first thing that this implied to me is that people don't seem to care or have any interest in autism unless they're either autistic themselves or have some involvement with autistic people such as family members, school pupils and so on. This is what we need to work on because if the general population aren't interested in autism they're going to know nothing about it other than maybe the common myths and misconceptions. In turn, if society doesn't know anything about autism it doesn't bode well for autism acceptance and creates an environment where autistics have to mask too much, suppress their stims and continue to live in a social environment that's very exclusive of us. Needless to say, that's what I and many others are working to change with blogs, vlogs, conferences, activism and everything else we do.

Age-wise, a third of the people surveyed are 18-25, another third are 30-50, and the other third (other than 1 participant) were under 18. Nobody over 50 took the survey. There were a couple of interesting points that the age of the participants showed me. Firstly, the lack of 25-30 year-olds which I don't understand what it means (if it means anything at all), but it's just interesting because it was unexpected. The other thing that's interesting is that there were no over 50's and there were more under 18's than I expected. I like to think that's an indication that times are changing, and despite the last paragraph it's showing that we are moving in the right direction - or at least beginning to. Speaking of things moving in the right direction, most of the participants answered that they're female. That could be an indication that autism in women is starting to be more recognised and understood, whereas previously it was thought to be an almost exclusively male condition.

Out of the people who answered yes to either themselves or somebody they know being autistic, 62% said it was themselves. 29% (including some of the 62%) said it was members of their family, which shows that there is definitely a genetic and probably a hereditary element to autism as I expected. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the others had autistic family members without realising it, just like I wouldn't be surprised if either or both of my parents are autistic. Some of the other answers include friends, neighbours and children they work with.

For the question asking what their understanding of autism is the answers were pretty much spot on with reality, which is to be expected given that most of the participants are autistic themselves. I was hoping for more non-autistic responses to give a more rounded picture of how society sees autism, but I am pleased that those who did take part have a good understanding of it as it can be difficult even for us autistics to understand. Most of the answers centered around it being a difference or a condition rather than a disability. It absolutely can be a disability, but everyone is different so not necessarily. The answer that stood out to me was that it's a condition that results in slowed learning but doesn't make the person any different. It's not a wrong answer, but because it's a broad spectrum there is more to it than our learning necessarily being slowed. Some might be unusually quick learners (a former team leader of mine at work used so compare me to a sponge because I take everything in), some might be slow, some might just be affected by any comorbid conditions they have, or any number of other factors. There are a couple of answers that used different wordings than I would have used and some that referred to stereotypes but nothing that was inaccurate because most stereotypes have at least some autistic people that relate to them.

For the next question "Is autism a disability?" a strong 62% answered yes, which is interesting because it's certainly classed as a disability by legal definition here in the UK, and is commonly referred to as the invisible disability. With that said, I personally both agree and disagree with it being a disability. My view of it is that autism in itself isn't a disability, but it can certainly cause disabilities based on the varied ways that it affects each individual. More people said they don't know if it's a disability than those saying no, which I'm surprised at as I thought it would mostly be a black and white yes/no scenario.

Where I asked what autism-related terms people are familiar with it was a pretty well rounded response with nothing getting less than 76% - that is with the exception of alexithymia at just 52%. I expected it to have one of the lowest percentages because it's only in the last year or 2 that I myself discovered that alexithymia. If I'm honest, that discovery was probably the biggest "ah-ha!" moment for me but I've already done a post about that a while ago if you want to read more. Meltdown scored 100% which isn't surprising. I would have expected neurodiversity to not score as high as it did (95%) if it wasn't for the participants being mostly autistic themselves.

The next question was whether there's anything that the participants believe autistic people can't do. The answers were pleasantly similar here to the understanding of autism question in that they're pretty realistic and positive. There was a solid understanding that every autistic is individual with their own set of skills, strengths and weaknesses so there's nothing that just the fact that they're autistic means they can't do. Again, there were some stereotypes but I think for the most part these are based on issues that the particular person faces rather than autistics as a whole.

It was the same kind of response for the question about things that autistic people can do better than others - mostly realistic, positive and that it varies from person to person. What I like about the answers to this question though is how much it portrays autism as a strength. There were things like becoming experts/specialists in their special interests, strong sense of logic, and a few other things that I'm not sure whether to class as stereotypes or just extremely common traits that a lot of us share such as being direct and to the point. But overall they do agree that it's different for each person and that whatever each person's traits are it doesn't make them defective or broken.

The final question asked what stereotypes the participants are aware of. The biggest thing I noticed from this was an extension of a stereotype I was already aware of, which is that autism only affects white males and mostly children. What I didn't know was this this stereotype also extends to sexual preferences and gender identities. Apparently the stereotype is that those white males also have to be straight and cisgender. Of course in reality autistic people are as diverse as everyone else in race, skin colour, gender, sexuality, age and everything else. The other most common answers are that we're stereotypically rude, selfish, good at maths and bad at empathy. We're not rude, selfish, badly behaved or any of that. Well, some of us can be but just in the same way that some neurotypicals can be rude, selfish and badly behaved while others aren't. That's not an autistic thing but we're landed with the stereotype anyway. My understanding was that we're meant to be good at computing and science rather than good at maths but I suppose there's links between maths and science. Empathy is another big one. Some autistics aren't good at empathy (myself included), whereas others have lots and lots of empathy but their either considered weird when they show it or they just may not know how to show it.

So that's a brief analysis of the survey results. Thanks again to everyone who took part! Although there was a distinct lack of non-autistic input which wouldn't have been the case had my original plan gone ahead (bloody Coronavirus!), I'm pleased that the answers I did get showed a good understanding of autism. If this has been as interesting for you as it has for me please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

Skill Tree

I was watching a YouTube video earlier today about how to explain autism to people who don't understand it. While watching that I had my own idea of an analogy that could help explain autism to people, so I wanted to post it here and see what people think. One of my biggest self care activities is playing video games, and I'm a fan of video games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Assassin's Creed where you build up your character by earning skill points that can be exchanged for skill from a skill tree. Obviously you'll be stronger and have more abilities and tactics at your disposal with each skill that you unlock, but each given one tends to be optional.

So I came up that this skill tree analogy, where we imagine life as the game that we're playing with a largely neurotypical society being the setting for the game's events. There's an image near the bottom of this post to help explain the analogy, but in this scenario neurotypicals naturally have most - if not all - of the skills shown in the skill tree image. Conversely, autistics tend to naturally grasp few - if any - of these skills although it's not unheard of for autistics to study, learn and achieve some of the skills. If we look at the example image, we can take the example of small talk that neurotypicals tend to naturally be good at and comfortable with. I on the other hand, can't do small talk to save my life. I myself have never taken the time to do some people-watching to study social interactions and try to learn how they work, but there are certainly other autistics who have, and had success with it to the point of being able to effectively "fake" small talk. With that said, how comfortable they may or may not be at the time is a completely different issue.

Empathy is also something that autistics stereotypically struggle with. The reality is that yes, some autistics (myself included) do absolutely struggle to feel empathy, although many other autistics do feel empathy but either express it differently or don't know how to express it at all. Sometimes, an autistic person can feel so much empathy for a person that it overwhelms them and the outwardly become what neurotypicals would deem to be overly emotional. I've never been one to feel or express a lot of empathy in face to face situations, although my empathy has really improved at work where I deal with customers over webchat instead, so the only contact I have with other humans is through a computer screen via instant message. Even then, it took a long time and a lot of work for me to learn when I should show empathy and what I should do to show it properly. If I'm completely honest the empathy is entirely fake, but it's the way that it comes across that's important in a job like mine, rather than whether you mean it.

This will make sense to fellow gamers like myself, but I hope I've explained it well enough for non-gamers to understand as well. Obviously everybody is different whether neurotypical or neurodivergent so each neurotype could have any combination of skills and abilities, but as a generalisation, neurotypicals will have many more of these skills than autistics. It's also worth pointing out that the skills shown in this skill tree image I made are by no means exhaustive as I made it purely for the purposes of example and demonstration.

Let me know what you think of this analogy. As far as I'm aware it's completely original and I hope it proves to be a helpful way to explain how autism works to people. Please remember to click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

Theory Of Mind

I thought I'd do something a bit different this week. Every now and then when I'm catching up on the autism conversation I hear about theory of mind. It's something I've looked into before but only very briefly so I'm not really sure what it is. What I thought I'd do for this post then is research what theory of mind is and report my findings here. Please feel free to sound off on whether I've got it right in the comments or on social media.

So here we go... Theory of mind is basically how you understand and anticipate other people's reactions and behaviours. Despite being called theory of mind it's not so much a theory in the sense of a wider known philosophy, instead it's your own theory about the way other people's minds work and their mental state. So for example, if you give somebody some news you'll usually try to predict how they'll react. That's your theory of how their mind is regardless of whether your prediction is right or wrong

Theory of mind wasn't something that was discovered until people started researching autism. Although it's not exclusively an autistic trait (it can be seen in all neurotypes) it seems to be most prevalent in autistics. A child's theory of mind starts to develop around the age of 4 or 5, which would explain why my nearly-3-year-old doesn't seem to grasp that things affect other people quite as much as her 4 year-old brother does. If you're good at putting yourself in other people's shoes that would indicate that you've got a good theory of mind, whereas if you struggle to understand other people's points of view that would indicate that you've got a poor/lack of theory of mind.

So long story short, theory of mind is really the understanding that other people have different thoughts, different feelings and different experiences than you. It sounds like something very simple that anybody should be able to grasp, but in reality it's not that easy for people like me. I remember one point in my teens not long after I left school a friend was talking to me about his complicated love life while we were hanging out one day. I was quite happily listening to him when he mentioned that he doesn't think I understand what he's talking about. I 100% understood the events that he was explaining to me, but I think what he was getting at is the emotional side of it and what affect things had on him. I had completely missed that whole part of what he was telling me because he didn't specifically say it with words, which would definitely be explained as a lack of theory of mind now that I know a bit more about it. In this way theory of mind has also been liked to empathy, and everyone knows the stereotype that autistic people don't have empathy at all. If we go back to purely theory of mind in itself though, there have always been little hints in my personality that my theory of mind isn't very good. I've always struggled to understand how some people don't like wrestling or don't like Nightwish (my favourite band of about 10 years or more). When I'm upset or angry I also seem to automatically think that people will know why even if they've had no involvement in the situation. This isn't helped by my alexithymia meaning I struggle to put words to my emotions.

There is a common theory of mind test that psychologists use on children when assessing for autism. It's called the Sally Anne test and consists of showing the child 2 dolls (called Sally and Anne, hence the name). One doll has a basket and the other has a box. The assessors will then put a marble in Sally's basket, Sally will go away for a bit, and Anne will take the marble and put it in her box. When Sally comes back the assessors ask the child where Sally will look first for the marble. The idea being that children with a good theory of mind will understand that Sally hasn't seen the marble being moved so she'll look straight in the basket where she first saw it. Those with poor theory of mind tend to believe that because they know the marble has been moved it means everybody including Sally knows that the marble has been moved, and they will usually say she'll look in the box because that's where it actually is. I wasn't given the Sally Anne test during my diagnostic assessment, but now that I know about it I'm starting to understand more about certain parts of my assessment and why the assessors did certain things.

For me, learning about theory of mind is one of those light bulb moments when you look back at yourself and think "That's me!" The same kind of moment happened when I learned that alexithymia is a thing, and I hope that by doing posts like this it helps other autistics understand themselves better, as well as helping neurotypicals understand us better. If you've enjoyed this post please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: Black silhouette of a male head on a white background with rainbow-coloured cogs in the brain area. At the bottom of the image is "Autism" in rainbow colours and "Theory of Mind" in black.]

Friendships

As an autistic person I've always struggled to make friends. That's not to say I've never had friends because I absolutely have, but the few friendships I somehow managed to make were mostly temporary and often circumstantial. I had a couple of friends at college but as soon as we graduated we pretty much stopped talking to each other. When I was at school I had a couple of friends who I spent pretty much all my time with, but didn't make friends with anyone outside of our little group of 3 until much later on in the final year of school. Looking back now they weren't all they were cracked up to be as friends, but I enjoyed what I had.

I think one of the reasons that I've never found it easy to make friends is because my special interests have never matched up with what anybody else was interested in so I didn't have anything to talk about. I've always found it hard to know what to say to other people, especially if I don't know them. Similarly, if I see anybody I haven't seen in ages I struggle to know what to say there too, which is why I don't like meeting up with people I haven't seen in years. It's like my head reverts back to them being complete strangers and I start getting anxious, even though I'm a lot more comfortable with those exact same people if I see or hear from them on a regular basis. I wouldn't go as far as saying it makes me more socially competent, but it makes me more comfortable if nothing else.

I think my definition of friendship has changed as well as I've grown older. When I was younger I used to define a friend as somebody I would be happy to go out to a pub with for example. I once explained to some colleagues at one of my old work places that there are lots of people working there who I like and get one with, but nobody I would consider a friend. There were only a handful of people at the time who I would have happy gone on a night out with, and there are even less of them these days. Nothing against most of the people I knew or work/ed with, it's just that I don't value most people's company as much as spending some quiet time on my own in peace.

Nowadays I've come to realise that I wouldn't even necessarily want to go on a night out with a friend. For example, my current team leader at work is probably the closest thing in-work that I've got to a friend. I help her with a few work bits and she's really been there for me when I needed her, brought me out of my shell and massively helped me raise my game at work. I'll be sad to lose her as my team leader when things at work change over the next couple of months, but we'll still be around to see each other which I'm glad about but that doesn't mean I'd want to go on a night out with her. I feel more comfortable going out as a team so that there are at least a few other people there meaning I can fade into the background when I need to. Just as another quick example, there's my friend Emma who I met on Twitter (you can check out her mental health blog here). We've never met in person and I can't say I'm overly keen to change that, but we've got a couple of things in common and we've tried to be there for each other when we needed it so I consider her a friend even though we don't talk online that much.

Going back to my friendships being circumstantial for a minute, almost all of my nights out when I was single had a purpose. That was to get me out and about and hopefully meet someone to start a romantic relationship with. Of course it never worked until I met my wife when I wasn't even trying to (I had bigger things to worry about that night), and it's not that I didn't like being around my friends and have fun because I really did, but for me the centre of every night out was putting myself out there to find love. Looking back, my friends did put up with a lot from me and I appreciate them being there because the search for love in itself became somewhat of an autistic special interest consuming almost every part of my life - which ironically is probably a reason it didn't work! I met my wife one night when I was doing stand-up comedy and was too preoccupied with my set and how badly it failed to worry about meeting anyone, but I did. My comedy group was another set of friends who I almost immediately fell out of touch with as soon as I started working full time and got together with Sarah so I didn't have the time to commit to the actual comedy any more like I used to.

I guess at the core of what I'm trying to say is that I don't gain anything from sociable interaction. It could either be because I'm autistic, or because I'd learned due to bullying etc that I'm better off staying reasonably isolated, or it could be a mix of both. I often wonder what neurotypicals get out of socialising with each other, and especially from small talk. To me, talking to people is a way to get information. I really don't believe that I need or want 90% of the information that people seem to give and take from each other but for some reason that I'll never understand they enjoy it. A perfect conversation for me is if one of us asks for information or an outcome, the other one gives it, and that's the end of it, we both go about our day. I feel very similarly about reading as well. It's rare that I'll ready anything for the enjoyment of it, but if it's something I want or need to know then I'll end up reading everything that I can find about it.

So that's how my autistic mind is with friendships. I'm sure a lot of autistics will likely agree with me, and so I hope it's given you an interesting insight into how we - or at least I - tick. If so, please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: A handshake between a black hand and a white hand. The image is on a white background with "Autism" towards the bottom in rainbow colours, and "Friendships" under that in black.]

Autism Advocacy

It's World Autism Awareness Week so I thought it would be an ideal time to discuss what autism advocacy means to me and why I do it.

I started this blog just over a year ago in the run up to last year's World Autism Awareness Week partly because I wanted to raise money by doing a 10 mile walk with the blog being a way to spread the word of what I was doing, and also to raise autism awareness in general. After I did the walk I carried on blogging once a week because with my busy schedule of work and parenting it's all I've got time to do in terms of advocacy. I wanted to make sure I was at least doing something.

So what is autism advocacy? It's a way for people (usually autistics themselves) to actively engage in the conversation around autism as a condition and to ultimately aid society's understanding and acceptance of us as people. I sometimes see debates online where people argue that we need to focus on autism acceptance rather than autism awareness, and therefore they disagree with things like World Autism Awareness Week. While I do agree that acceptance is the ultimate goal, I also think they go hand in hand. In my opinion, to achieve autism acceptance people need to understand autism, and the way to understand autism is by advocates such as myself explaining it - i.e. raising autism awareness. Autism awareness is about more than just letting people know that autism exists. I don't believe that you can have one without the other, so for that reason I think World Autism Awareness Week is a great thing despite the fact that in an ideal world we shouldn't need to dedicate a specific day or week to it, it should just be the norm. But obviously not much in this world is ideal.

I do wish I could do more for the cause, but my hours at work will be changing very soon so maybe that'll give me a bit more time to dedicate to advocacy in the future. World Autism Awareness Week is 30th March to 5th April.

For now though, I'll just remind you to please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: The word "Autism" in rainbow colours on a white background. Directly underneath it are the words "Awareness", "Accessibility" and "Acceptance", all in smaller black text. Towards the bottom of the image are the hashtags #ActuallyAutistic and #Asking Autistics. This is the image used on my Instagram to promote this post.]