Better only with autistics.

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How would autism speaks be better if it was only run by people on the spectrum? Any ideas or opinions?

I would think that they would be able to promote autism as a strength rather than being some dreadful disease which should be treated and bred out of society.

They (Autism Speaks) must consider us all to be - the R word - and that is very inaccurate and causes offence and pain.

I am strongly in favour of autistics being in charge of Autism Speaks. Bring it on.

I think it might be a mistake to exclude all NT input from it. Maybe keep a couple of NTs on its governing council or whatever it calls itself.

The NTs can make the coffee

I think a group like that should include information and support for both autistics and family members with an autistic in the family, and possibly also the education community. It really started (as far as I can tell) as a group to support parents of autistic children. All very well and good, but it was a little too successful in that aim and has become something of a menace because of it.

I don't think Autism Speaks represents autistic people at all. There is not one autistic person on their leadership board, and their goals are very questionable. It's called "Autism Speaks", but it would be more aptly named "NTs speak against autism" or something. It's almost as if a bunch of straight people got together and formed a group called "Homosexuality Speaks", and put all their efforts into finding a "cure" for gay people and researching ways to detect if an embryo is gay so that the baby can be aborted and never born homosexual. I really wish this would change and give people a better message about autism.

It probably would be significantly better, mostly because the current people in charge of it have set the bar pretty low.

Being autistic is very difficult to explain to a neurotypical person, it seems strange that they should consist mostly of NTs. I watched a vlog where the vlogger said that they spend most of their resources trying to identify autistic "genes" so autistic fetuses could be terminated in the womb. Do they put much of their resources into developing education resources for autistic children? To my mind that would be a big priority.