NOS Magazine

New Wearable Detects Meltdowns Before They Happen

A new wristband may give autistic people and our caregivers warning that a meltdown is coming up to five minutes before they happen. Dr. Rosalind Picard of MIT presented the unpublished results on Friday at the 2018 International Society for Autism Research annual meeting in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. ­­

During her keynote, Dr. Picard emphasized the importance of looking beyond neurotypical…

AARP Calls the Cops on Disabled Protesters

Today, ADAPT protested at major nonprofits in Washington DC, to demand support for the Disability Integration Act. By the end of the day, both  the Heritage Foundation and Center for American Progress  expressed their support for the bill. AARP, however, decided to call the police to disperse disabled protesters. AARP represents the interests of older Americans and reports a membership of over 38…

Developmental Disability Community Faces a Housing Crisis

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Bérubé published an op-ed in USA Today, titled “Don’t Let My Son Plunge Off the ‘Disability Cliff’ When I’m Gone.” In it, Bérubé, the father of a young man with an intellectual disability, describes the devastating loss of services youths with disabilities face when they leave their K-12 years. He describes his family’s efforts to find…

Whatever Happened to Arnaldo Rios?

The image of Charles Kinsey lying on the street, arms raised as he tried to calm his client, Arnaldo Rios, before police shot Kinsey in is a nightmare scenario for many autistic people and our families. After the shooting, the local police union for North Miami tried to excuse Kinsey’s shooting by saying that they were aiming at Rios when Kinsey was shot. Rios had been playing with a toy truck,…

ADAPT Protests at White House to Stop the Shocks

Today I am with a group of ADAPT protesters calling for the Trump Administration to release regulations prepared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and halt the use of contingent electric shock, a physically painful and mentally and physically harmful as a means of controlling disabled people. The shock, currently used only at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) in Canton, Massachusetts,…

Oscars 2018: The Shape of Disability Representation

Oscar season: evening gowns, betting pools and accolades for non-disabled actors. When The Shape of Water won Best Picture, it sparked a conversation in the disability community about authentic representation. This year’s nominees, like so many previous slates, included a non-disabled actor playing a disabled character. Sally Hawkins received a nomination for her performance as Elisa, a mute…

Blind Tom Wiggins: Black Neurodivergent Excellence

Thomas ‘Blind Tom’ Wiggins was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1848, on a slave plantation owned by Wiley Jones. Though Tom was originally designated to be sold off or left for dead for his blindness and presumed uselessness on a slave plantation, Tom’s mother fought to keep him with the rest of his family by arranging to have herself, her husband, Tom, and her two other children sold as a group to…

Harriet Tubman: Neurodivergent Black Excellence

Editor’s note: This article is the first of a four part series highlighting Black and neurodivergent leaders and historical figures, in honor Black History Month. Each leader was selected by Finn Gardiner, a contemporary Black and Autistic leader and scholar. Harriet Tubman is widely known as a brave Black woman who led herself and hundreds of other slaves to freedom through the loose network of…

Humanity & Inclusion became the new name of Handicap International’s global network today. The organization, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work to ban anti-personnel landmines, implements more than 300 emergency and development projects in about 60 countries per year. New name. New logo. ‘Humanity & Inclusion’ expresses one of the organization’s central values, humanity. This is…

Last week, the quarterly Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee meeting took place. IACC is a government advisory panel responsible for setting federal research priorities. A thread running throughout the six hour meeting was representation and diversity, or lack thereof, both  in autism community leadership positions and within IACC itself. In many ways, the sessions were a string of events…

In 2016, the Ford Foundation made a commitment to social justice. Unfortunately, their early efforts were plagued with missteps when it came todisability community issues. In 2017, the Ford Foundation made a commitment to centering disability rights. The result of this new effort is still in its early phases, but the work they have done on disability so far has been nothing short of…

#Oprah2020 was trending on social media last week. Speculation about Ms. Winfrey running for President became part of the morning news cycle after her inspiring Golden Globe acceptance speech. Oprah Winfrey has a fondness or pseudoscience. This fondness has caused harm to the medical community, the practice of psychology, and to our autism community in particular. If she runs I will neither…

Last week, Autism Speaks released their new “Strategic Plan for Science 2018-2020.” The new strategic plan follows a wording change to their mission statement and a 2017 stakeholder survey. The survey was primarily about Autism Speaks’ research funding. The kinds of research they fund impacts autistic people, since according to an IACC document, they are the third largest funder of autism…

Neurodivergent people are one of the few groups who can be deprived of our most basic forms of autonomy and privacy just because of who we are.  This includes confinement in institutional settings such as group homes, nursing homes and residential schools, as well as guardianship and court orders for the misleadingly-named “assisted outpatient treatment.”  Most recently, the United States Food…

Note: This article contains discussion of disordered eating. For many parents of a newly-diagnosed autistic child, a quick internet search into autism tells them that changing their child’s diet is a smart first step towards “improving” autistic behaviors or other co-occuring conditions. Despite the popularity of “autism diets”, research shows that there is insufficient proof that they do…

Denzel Washington sometimes feels like the personification of the old maxim about how African-Americans must be “twice as good to get half as much.” His last big role was his masterful, self-directed performance in 2016’s adaptation of August Wilson’s “Fences,” but the best actor of his generation remains the best whether he’s playing drug kingpin Frank Lucas in “American Gangster” or recreating…

Cranston, Rhode Island, has just established a voluntary registry to record information on autistic people between the ages of 6 and 21. The registry is managed by the Cranston Police Department and is intended to help autistic young people who interact with the police. Autism registries aren’t limited to Cranston. Several US states and Canadian provinces have databases that require or encourage…