Access. Inclusion. Diversity. All people deserve to be embraced by their community. Autism Friendly Cities: How to Create an Inclusive Community is the first book designed to guide city leadership and staff through the processes of training and evaluation, development, and implementation of an Autism Friendly initiative that will help you open your doors to everyone. People with autism should be able to participate in all that is offered and facilitated by their city, including services, activities, events, and points of connection. Being an Autism Friendly City is not only socially responsible, it will improve engagement, outreach, economic development, and resident satisfaction.
Based on the award-winning Autism Friendly Training Program, created by the non-profit organization STARS for Autism, this book empowers the everyday professional to a better understanding and skill in working with, interacting with, serving, and teaching children and adults who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD). After a thorough explanation of ASD and how it affects children, adults, families, and communities, this guide describes the Autism Friendly Training Program and gives the reader insight into what it means to become autism friendly and to be an autism friendly training presenter. This text will enable those who are neurotypical to gain insight into the person, the stories, and the lives of those with ASD. It is a guide to understanding autism at a deeper level to enable relationship and support processes that define being autism friendly. Providing the needed information, tools, and confidence to be autism friendly, this book will be beneficial to any and all businesses, organizations, groups, communities, families, and individuals who work with, serve, interact with, teach, parent, and experience life with an autistic person.
Designed as a guidebook for leaders at the beginning of their journey embracing neuroinclusion, Autism Friendly Business: Serving Neurodiverse Customers will provide business owners, executives, managers, team members, and associates the tools to integrate strategies and techniques that will enhance their business, while improving the delivery of a quality experience for all. Autistic individuals often experience barriers when engaging with businesses. This book provides solutions and examples on how leaders can remove obstacles to develop supportive and inclusive environments.
Care and Design: Bodies, Buildings, Cities connects the study of design with care, and explores how concepts of care may have relevance for the ways in which urban environments are designed. It explores how practices and spaces of care are sustained specifically in urban settings, thereby throwing light on an important arena of care that current work has rarely discussed in detail.
Solving Urban Infrastructure Problems Using Smart City Technologies is the most complete guide for integrating next generation smart city technologies into the very foundation of urban areas worldwide, showing how to make urban areas more efficient, more sustainable, and safer. Smart cities are complex systems of systems that encompass all aspects of modern urban life. A key component of their success is creating an ecosystem of smart infrastructures that can work together to enable dynamic, real-time interactions between urban subsystems such as transportation, energy, healthcare, housing, food, entertainment, work, social interactions, and governance. Solving Urban Infrastructure Problems Using Smart City Technologies is a complete reference for building a holistic, system-level perspective on smart and sustainable cities, leveraging big data analytics and strategies for planning, zoning, and public policy. It offers in-depth coverage and practical solutions for how smart cities can utilize resident's intellectual and social capital, press environmental sustainability, increase personalization, mobility, and higher quality of life. - Brings together experts from academia, government and industry to offer state-of- the-art solutions for urban system problems, showing how smart technologies can be used to improve the lives of the billions of people living in cities across the globe - Demonstrates practical implementation solutions through real-life case studies - Enhances reader comprehension with learning aid such as hands-on exercises, questions and answers, checklists, chapter summaries, chapter review questions, exercise problems, and more
As the world has become increasingly urbanised and planetary well-being ever more threatened, questions have emerged over just what the priorities should be for how we live in cities. Clearly for many the current ways of planning and managing city environments are not working, given so many of their human and non-human inhabitants struggle on a daily basis to maintain their well-being and survival. Different approaches to city development are crucial if they are to be inclusive places where all can thrive. Ensuring that cities are safe and sustainable and provide a level of care for all their residents places a significant mandate on those who manage cities and on planners in particular. This book examines all the parts of the city where care needs to be incorporated, how we plan, create nurturing environments, include all who live there, build sensitively, support meaningful livelihoods, and enable compassionate governance. With planners in mind this book examines why care is needed in the urban environment, and drawing on real world examples examines how it can be applied in an effective and empowering fashion.
This volume provides an in-depth, qualitative exploration of familial entrepreneurship as an innovative employment model, being established by families in response to difficulties faced by individuals with developmental disabilities in entering the labor market. Drawing on rich qualitative data collected via research with families, this volume explores how and why familial entrepreneurs in the United States have chosen to develop businesses to employ their loved ones. Chapters offer close analysis of the challenges and opportunities associated with familial entrepreneurship and highlight the ways in which this practice supports people with developmental disabilities by providing opportunities for skill development, social interaction, and participation in meaningful activity. Recognizing familial entrepreneurship as a new and distinct hybrid employment model, the text goes on to consider how curricula, policy, and state services might better support families and underpin this form of inclusive work. The volume provides important conclusions that contribute to the fields of Disability Studies, Entrepreneurship, Inclusive Education, Adult Education, Exceptional Student Education, Transition, and Vocational Rehabilitation. It is a key reading for scholars in these fields and across Education more widely.
"This book is a message from autistic people to their parents, friends, teachers, coworkers and doctors showing what life is like on the spectrum. It's also my love letter to autistic people. For too long, we have been forced to navigate a world where all the road signs are written in another language." With a reporter's eye and an insider's perspective, Eric Garcia shows what it's like to be autistic across America. Garcia began writing about autism because he was frustrated by the media's coverage of it; the myths that the disorder is caused by vaccines, the narrow portrayals of autistic people as white men working in Silicon Valley. His own life as an autistic person didn't look anything like that. He is Latino, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and works as a journalist covering politics in Washington D.C. Garcia realized he needed to put into writing what so many autistic people have been saying for years; autism is a part of their identity, they don't need to be fixed. In We're Not Broken, Garcia uses his own life as a springboard to discuss the social and policy gaps that exist in supporting those on the spectrum. From education to healthcare, he explores how autistic people wrestle with systems that were not built with them in mind. At the same time, he shares the experiences of all types of autistic people, from those with higher support needs, to autistic people of color, to those in the LGBTQ community. In doing so, Garcia gives his community a platform to articulate their own needs, rather than having others speak for them, which has been the standard for far too long.
The award-winning travel bible for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and/or mood and distraction disorders. “An essential read, not only for parents of autistic or otherwise neurodivergent children but for all families.”—Library Journal, Starred Review Traveling with children is always challenging, but for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and/or mood and attention and distraction disorders it can be especially intimidating. In Traveling Different, Dawn M. Barclay presents travel strategies and anecdotes from Certified Autism Travel Professionals™, parents of special needs children, associations and advocates, and mental health professionals, broken down by mode of transportation and type of venue. The heart of the book outlines suggested itineraries for spectrum families as well as venues that cater to the unique special interests that are characteristic of individuals with autism. Culminating with a guide of travel agents who specialize in special needs travel and lists of organizations that advocate for special needs families, Traveling Different is the essential resource to make the cultural, educational, and bonding benefits of vacations available to all.
This complete guide to LEGO® Therapy contains everything you need to know in order to set up and run a LEGO® Club for children with autism spectrum disorders or related social communication difficulties and anxiety conditions. By providing a joint interest and goal, LEGO® building can become a medium for social development such as sharing, turn-taking, making eye-contact, and following social rules. This book outlines the theory and research base of the approach and gives advice on all practical considerations including space, the physical layout of the room and choosing and maintaining materials, as well as strategies for managing behaviour, further skill development, and how to assess progress. Written by the pioneer of the approach alongside those who helped form it through their research and evaluation, this evidence-based manual is essential reading for professionals working with autism who are interested in running a LEGO® Club or learning more about the therapy.
