DEAL works with people diagnosed as autistic.

I say ‘people diagnosed as autistic’ rather than ‘autistic people’ because autism is very hard to define and therefore very hard to diagnose.  I don’t doubt that there is a neurological problem  - or a range of different neurological problems – behind their difficulties, but I’m not sure that trying to pull everything under one condition is helpful.

People diagnosed with autism cover an enormous range of presentations, from people who have some difficulties in interacting with others freely to people who can't talk, have severe motor movement difficulties, and have immense behaviour problems.

DEAL works with people diagnosed as autistic, but we don’t work on their autism as such.  However,  very often they have severe communication impairments, and that we can help. 

Those people diagnosed as autistic who have severe communication impairment are generally described as ‘low functioning’, and may also be classified as intellectually impaired.  Exactly as with intellectual impairment, DEAL’s experience is that these people do in fact have more or less intact language, and it’s a matter of enabling them to access and express it.

If people diagnosed as autistic do find a means to communicate this often leads to other changes, but that’s not the reason for doing it.  Everybody has a right to communicate.  

Accounts of DEAL's work with people with these issues are here and here.