Everyone at ASAN was new to the autistic community at one point. There were times when we felt alone, when we did not understand our disability or know how to communicate our needs. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about the autistic community, neurodiversity, and self-advocacy, and it’s important to us to share that knowledge with others who might just be starting to understand autism. That’s why we made Welcome to the Autistic Community, a revamped resource now available entirely online at autismacceptance.com or as a book here.

The comprehensive new Welcome to the Autistic Community resource covers a variety of subjects all about autism, the autistic community, self-advocacy, and our hard-won rights. It replaces our earlier booklet with the same name, as well as our previous Autism Acceptance Month website — we hope that this new resource will promote autism acceptance all year round! We created Welcome To The Autistic Community for autistic people, especially those who are just finding out that they are autistic. But anyone can use this resource to learn more about autism, self-advocacy, and how to be a good ally to autistic people.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you can find in the new Welcome to the Autistic Community:

• All About Autism
• Who Can be Autistic?
• Autism Facts
• Autism and Disability
• Self-Advocacy and the Self-Advocacy Movement
• Knowing Your Rights
• Finding And Making Autistic Community
• Being An Ally

The expanded Welcome to the Autistic Community is available in its entirety at autismacceptance.com, in Plain Language and Extra Space formats. The Extra Space format has more space between lines, as well as shorter paragraphs and sentences, for increased visual and cognitive accessibility. You can also find the new Welcome to the Autistic Community as a book, available here!

There’s lots of great information in the new and improved Welcome to the Autistic Community that we wish we’d been given when we were first learning about ourselves and our place in the community. We’re thrilled to share what we’ve learned with you, and we can’t wait to see what you do with the information. Sharing autistic community and wisdom is really important to us, and we hope that it helps you!