How crucial is facial blindness for a DX?

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How important is it to have facial blindness to be diagnosed?

Not at all. I think it's a co-morbid, not an official AS diagnostic criteria. Assuming you mean the inability to remember faces, as opposed to difficulty understanding the expressions on them.

No, I meant the inability to determine emotion.

I have learned a great deal about facial expressions because I draw portraits. So I do well on facial recognition and identifying emotion. But I still never know how to respond. I am aware that a person is angry/sad/happy but never seem to respond in quite the right manner.

No way during my tests it came up anything about reading emotions. So if it is not in the test I guess it doesn't really matter.

But I totally suck at it anyway.

When you say facial blindness do you mean inability to read emotions/expressions or facial recognition? I have problems with facial expressions/emotions not recognition so I'm not sure if its a diagnostic criterium.

It's not in the DSM, but it can be an indicator for an ASD.

There was an interesting article about facial blindness in the New Yorker a few weeks ago. It was written by neurologist Oliver Sacks. It seems that he has facial blindess himself!

According to this article, about 10% of the US population has facial blindness.

I have always had trouble remembering faces. I took an online test and found myself just a hair away from being categorized as face blind.

Armed with this information - I am very vigilant about wearing my name tag at work. I need to assume that many of my clients and their families may have trouble recognizing me and might be relying on my name tag. So many of my co-workers forget to wear theirs and, I admit, I often have trouble telling some of my co-workers apart

Anyways, I have lost track of which weeks New Yorker it was - but it should be easy to search for.