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Argument, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
A panellist said light intolerance showed where the social model of disability stops
In short
At the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne, a late diagnosed panellist accepted the social model of disability but said some autistic sensory limits are not socially imposed, and that disablement can change by the hour.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
A panellist at the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne accepted the social model of disability and then marked where, in their own experience, it stopped. The panel on autism and disability had opened with a panellist describing themselves as proudly disabled, and framing disability as the barriers society and the environment put in a person’s way. The third panellist to answer, speaking after the first two, said they had been diagnosed autistic a lot older, and were at a different point in the journey, with internalised ableism still strong in them and something they were trying to overcome. They agreed with the first panellist about the social model. The exception, they said, was a part of their sensory makeup that is not socially imposed. They have a very strong intolerance of light, and “the sun is not a social construct”.
That limit, the panellist said, is simply a disabling part of the sensory makeup that comes with being autistic.
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Sources the story draws on
- Fundamental Principles of Disability (opens in a new tab), Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation and The Disability Alliance (copy held by the Disabled People's Archive)
- Working together to deliver the NDIS: Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Final Report (opens in a new tab), Commonwealth of Australia (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet)
- Release of the final report of the Independent Review into the NDIS (opens in a new tab), Department of Social Services
- Nationwide population-based cohort study of psychiatric disorders in individuals with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or hypermobility syndrome and their siblings (opens in a new tab), BMC Psychiatry
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