Please give me feedback on my autism talk

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Hi,

I've recently started speaking about autism at autism awareness events i run I am new to this and I would like honest feedback about my talk. I want it to be accurate, interesting and entertaining. I also want to present it well.

This video is not public. It's just for review... https://youtu.be/aYeq9xKJk9M

Please give me honest feedback because I want this to be as good as it can be!

Thanks,
Scott Stokely

I think it is a very good start, you enunciate what you are saying well. Learn about sensory sensitivities in autism, for example a loud room may be painful to the ears, autistics often visually sensitive such things as flourecent lighting where the flickering that is un or barely noticeable is visually painful to an autistic person, touch can feel like an electric shock and so on. Sensory sensitivities may make social interaction may extremely uncomfortable. Autistic have repetitive body movements called Stims or stimming that are loosly extreme versions of tics. We do it to self regulate, calm down when overwhelmed, or just when we are happy. These stims are often misinterpreted by others.

Autistics are a small minority who thinks, read others, present differently then most and this is isolating. Related is that Autistics are usually bullied and thus fear social interaction. Yet often we are happy to indulge in our "special interests" by ourselves.

There is a young women who has created a number of educational YouTube videos designed mostly for non autistic people.
Ask an Autistic YouTube channel

I liked it, the examples were engaging and accurate. As ASPOM said, I would add a bit about sensory problems, because they are a major part of why we have such trouble in public settings. For instance, in the example you used about the parents who were worrying on Thursday about the trip to the grocery store on Saturday, they were most likely worried in that situation because the sensory overload is what sets their autistic child off and makes the outing unmanageable.

I appreciated what you said about talking to aspies about our special interests. So often I hear from others that I shouldn't talk so much about my obsessions, and should try to talk about what other people are interested in, so they don't get bored, but it's really hard, because these obsessions are practically the centre of my existence, and not talking about them just makes for really dull conversations for me. It's nice to be reminded that just because they're seen as peculiar, doesn't mean my interests are any less valid than anyone else's.

One more thing I would mention is stimming. I suspect one of the reasons people become anxious around us is because they don't understand why we're flapping or bouncing or humming or doing strange things with our hands, and that puts them off approaching us. I think understanding stimming would go a fair way toward bridging the gap of understanding. Thanks for creating your informative video. I created a similar one for an online college class I lectured for, if you have any interest in watching it. It's about 28 minutes long, so you don't have to watch the whole thing. Feedback is welcome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24f8GoJYdlA