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I am a member of the Disability Leadership Institute, which is an excellent organisation. I attend a regular Zoom meeting of the group which always generates interesting discussion. Yesterday we were talking about the issue of people’s disability being used to define their identity. Others in the group – who are not autistic – said that it was quite fraught to identify someone according to their disability but I had a different approach. I said that autism actually does define me to a large extent and that this is the experience of many other autistics. Many of us see our autism as an integral part of what makes us who we are.

There is a famous debate around person first and identity first in autism. Do I say ‘I am a person with autism’ or ‘I have autism’ or do I say ‘I am Autistic’? And what does each option…