As he had already done it in Australia in May 2024, our autistic friend Stephen M. Shore proudly represented Autistan during the Second Global Education Conference ‘Voices of Individuals with Disabilities’, which was held at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, campus de Mysuru – Inde, of 25 au 27 July 2024.
This biennial conference is a joint effort with faculty members from the College of Education and Health Sciences of Adelphi University (New York), where Stephen is a Special Education Teacher.
The Autistan T-shirt he wears is an example of collaboration.
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The Hindi words at the top mean “Help” / “The Autistic World”, as Stephen explained to us, “The Autistic World” is preferable to “The world of autistic”.
He is right because it is simpler and more faithful to the concept (which is not the idea of a 'world that belongs to autistic people’ but rather the world of autism).-
(Well no, there are several ways to translate “Monde”, and we chose the word “Vishwa”, as explained in This item.)
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Stephen suggested using a variation of the Autistan flag to better highlight the Autistan Disc on the T-shirt, explaining that it is the most significant element.
Once again, he was right, so much so that we now use this new logo on other occasions (in addition to the flag of Autistan, which of course does not change).
Stephen Mark Shore is a very famous autistic professor (perhaps the most famous autistic person in the world after Temple Grandin).
He loves and supports the concept of Autistan (as you can see in this photo), and for several years already, he kindly and spontaneously agreed to be Autistan Ambassador for New York State in the United States.
Stephen is a great traveler, just like our other friend and supporter Josef Schovanec.
Besides, they wrote a book together (Josef translated and adapted Stephen's book : “Understanding Autism for Dummies”).
What we do is holistic, global and coherent :
- See the participations and declarations of Josef Schovanec in relation to Autistan
- See our recent meeting with the Vice-Ambassador of India in Brasilia
- See our explanation on the choice of “Autistic Vishwa” in Hindi to translate “Autistic World”
- See Stephen Shore en Australie (INSAR Conference, Melbourne, 15-18/05/2024)
- See our recent Full review of Australia's draft National Autism Strategy
- See our recent participation au C20 (G20) to Rio de Janeiro, where this pretty badge (thanks to Stephen) was used
All these actions allow us to move forward little by little, in the hope that one day the public bodies concerned will finally understand that our concept is not just “a cool idea with a nice flag”, but above all a very useful resource to really understand the difficulties and needs of autistic people, in order to improve or create the necessary and truly appropriate public policies, thanks to all the explanations, details, nuances and concrete examples that we can provide.