2010s-present

Now known as Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network, AWN was founded by Sharon da Vanport. It was started after a conflict with the Aspergers Women’s Association. It addressed the lack of representation and leadership of autistic women and of other marginalized genders. 

Ari Ne’eman was appointed to the National Council on Disability during the Obama Administration. He was appointed by Secretary of State Kathleen Sebelius. He was also the first openly autistic person to be nominated, as well as the youngest in a long time.

An Australia-based organization called the AEIOU Foundation proposed a “communication shutdown” on November 1st, 2010 to represent the supposed frustration autistic people face with communication. This meant spending an entire day off of social media.Autistic people found out about this, and found it to be very patronizing and missing the mark. Corina Becker and Kat Bjørnstad, decided to take action and form a blog. They reclaimed the day to showcase the writings of autistic people. They  also wanted to take a jab at Autism Speaks’s name, so it was titled “Autistics Speaking Day”. It’s now observed on November 1st every year.

John Elder Robison, Stephen Shore, Ari Ne’eman, and Scott Robertson were among the first few autistic people to serve on the IACC. This led to further appointment of more autistic people, many of whom support the Neurodiversity Movement, onto a committee that advises the federal government on autism research funding. 

A blog called Boycott Autism Speaks was also started, which was a way of spreading the word on the harms this organization was doing. Boycott Autism Speaks is run by several volunteers. They orchestrated smaller-scale boycotts against companies that donated to them during this time. Some of them were successful. Activists were able to convince Build-A-Bear Workshop to cut their ties.

In 2011, Paula Durbin-Westby devised of a counter to the well-known Autism Awareness Month with Autism Acceptance Month

Autistic Facebook users began adding the “Âû” moniker to their usernames to denote that they were autistic and subscribed to the ten principles of the Autistic Union, an informal organization. 

Shannon Rosas, a mother of a non speaking autistic man named Leo, started a blog under a nonprofit called the Myers-Rosa Foundation called Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (TPGA). This has been used as a place for autistic people to blog about issues important to them, as well as occasional allies. Some of TPGA’s leadership is autistic too, and they hold equal power to those who aren’t. 

After five years of being an all-volunteer organization, ASAN became a non-profit and opened an in-person office space in Washington D.C., in the same building as the National Council on Independent Living. They retained their statewide chapters, but now had a national chapter with paid staff. 

In 2012, an autistic researcher named Damian Milton published a paper known as the “Double Empathy Problem”. It was a challenge to the idea that autistic people lacked empathy, and instead, challenged the idea that non-autistic people even had empathy for autistic people. It suggests that people, autistic or not, with similar experiences are more likely to relate to one another, and that’s why non-autistic people struggle to understand autistic people and vice-versa. It encourages autistic people to meet each other for that reason.

ACI is a week-long leadership academy led by ASAN that is held every summer. It was first held in 2012. They teach students about effective advocacy, particularly on college campuses, since the program is for autistic people enrolled in college and any other post-secondary education. It ends with Hill Day, where students and ASAN staff visit their senators at their national offices on Capitol Hill. 

#StopTheShock is an ongoing campaign started in the early 2010s. It revolves around a center in Canton, Massachusetts called the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, or JRC for short. The JRC has been in operation for more than fifty years and started as the Behavioral Research Institute in Providence, Rhode Island. It also had a campus in California and in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts location is the only one still open. It was started by Matthew Israel, a pupil of B.F. Skinner’s who opened a center for people with the most “disturbing” behaviors. Many forms of aversives are used at the JRC and have been used, but the most infamous is a Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED), a backpack strapped to a person where strong electric shocks are administered whenever someone displays an unwanted behavior. Advocates were mobilized by a leaked security camera video of Andre McCollins being strapped to a table and shocked, with him screaming desperately. Many self-advocates in the disability community were outraged by this, and decided to take action. This included in-person protests. This includes outside the center itself, outside of the Food and Drug Administration’s building, and at hearings in the State of Massachusetts. People from ASAN, ADAPT, and various other disability self-advocacy organizations have been organizing events in the name of stopping the shock for more than a decade now. They’ve tried getting the most infamous thing they do banned, that being the shock devices, though the end goal is to close the JRC entirely.

Zoe Gross devised a day to commemorate the murders of disabled people by their caregivers’ hands. An autistic man named George Hodgins was murdered by his parents, though the media focused on the supposed blight of his parents rather than the real tragedy, which was that an autistic person was killed. Zoe wanted to bring attention to this phenomenon, and how it was just one example of a disturbing trend. She started a list and created a day where these names could be read out, and the victims of filicide to be given proper recognition. The first vigil was held in Washington D.C. and brought together representatives of several disability organizations, though it was organized under ASAN. Ever since, vigils have been held mainly across the US and Canada every year on March 1st. 

Autism Network International was disbanded in 2013 after the final Autreat was held. There was much unrest after an incident involving a seizure, and the leadership’s response to it. ANI was beyond organizing capacity at this point, and with the existence of other organizations doing similar work, and the retirement of Jim Sinclair, ANI ended operation. 

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual was published. Asperger’s Syndrome was removed as a diagnosis. Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) was also combined into autism as a result. Now everything autism related is just Autism Spectrum Disorder. Ari Ne’eman and Steven Kapp, among other ASAN representatives, lobbied the American Psychiatric Association for specific changes to the autism diagnostic criteria to give it a more accurate reflection of what autism really was. 

The Association for the Autistic Community was started in 2013 to organize autistic-led conferences in the same vein as Autreat. They’ve organized two conferences- Association for the Autistic Community and Autspace. The last Autspace was in 2019, with a future event currently being planned.  

Autistic UK is a labor party organization that works to represent autistic people in the places where devices are designed, decisions are made, and whole communities are affected. They credit themselves as the first autistic campaigning organization in the UK.

Autistics United Canada was an organization spread across several Canadian provinces. Their principles were based in Disability Justice. They focused on self advocacy, autonomy, autistic well-being, and cultural change

NeuroTribes: The History of Autism and Future of Neurodiversity is a book written by Steve Silberman. It was published in 2015 and became a New York Times Best-seller. 

Autistics for Autistics was started by Anne Borden King. They are Ontario-based and started in 2016. They have ongoing campaigns in policy and education

AIM was founded by Emma Dalmayne and has a USA chapter that absorbed what was left of Fierce Autistics and Allies. They do some campaigning, including protests, as well as socials for autistic kids and autistic parents.

United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the Better Care and Reconciliation Act. This included budget cuts to medicaid. Several organizations banded together in an unprecedented effort to occupy Capitol Hill, specifically Mitch McConnell’s office, in protest of these proposed cuts. 

Not Otherwise Specified Magazine (shortened to NOS Mag) as a news and commentary source for thought and analysis about neurodiversity culture and representation. The contributors were not exclusively autistic, though it was autistic-led. Sara Luterman was the editor.

CardGate refers to an incident related to behavior analysts making their own Cards Against Humanity deck in 2017. The deck makes light of practices  like force feeding and electric shock. It was shared by BCBA content creator BehaviorBabe. It was assumed she was one of the people behind the card deck, but it turns out she was not. It was never discovered who exactly made it, but it was a group of behavior analysts. International Day of Protest Against ABA was started after this incident occurred. 

#BoycottToSiri was a social media campaign that surrounded the book To Siri with Love, written by Judith Newman. The contents of the book included very intimate details about Gus, who was a teenager at the time she wrote it. She questioned whether Gus had an inner life at all, and talked about how she was contemplating sterilization and guardianship. Many autistic people were upset about this book, and took to social media with the hashtag BoycottToSiri. Amethyst Schaeber, a well known advocate in autistic spaces at the time, started the campaign.

 The Fund for Community Reparations For Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment, otherwise known as the Autistic People of Color Fund, is an organization that started in 2018 via a grant from the American Association of People with Disabilities. They raise money so that they can provide grants to autistic people of color. Their leadership is entirely people of color.It was founded by Lydia Brown. 

Autism Women’s Network became Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network

An organization called National Council on Severe Autism was founded by Jill Escher, and Alison Singer. Their work runs counter to the priorities of the Neurodiversity Movement. 

CommunicationFIRST was started by Tauna Szymanski. Many people in their leadership and board are people with communication-related disabilities, which includes autistic people who use AAC.  They focus a lot on policy,but they have also made a five minute short film called LISTEN in 2021. They also helped produce a film called This is Not About Me, which focuses on one person in particular-Jordyn Zimmerman-and how getting access to an AAC device and presuming competence completely changed her life. They also recently started a project called AAC Counts, being coordinated by Alyssa Hillary  Zisk, who is a part time AAC user. It’s looking at data related to AAC users in California and what areas of improvement there are for meeting their needs.

International Association for Spelling to Communicate (IAS-C) was started by Elizabeth Vossler. They are an organization led by nonspeakers and spelling to communicate practitioners. I-ASC is committed to ensuring access to effective communication that supports access, agency and autonomy for nonspeaking, minimally and unreliably speaking individuals.

The Food and Drug Administration issued their final ban on the Graduated Electronic Decelerator devices used at the Judge Rotenberg Center. This ban was delayed on grounds of the COVID-19 lockdowns. 

Well-known and longtime activist Mel Baggs died of medical neglect at the age of 39.

CommunicationFIRST released a short film called LISTEN, which featured various nonspeaking autistic people talking about how they want to be perceived and respected. This was made as a response to Sia’s movie MUSIC, which featured a non-autistic actor playing a nonspeaking autistic character.

Mark Rober partnered with several celebrities to do a fundraiser for Autism Awareness Month called “Color the Spectrum”. Proceeds went to NEXT For Autism. Autistic advocates were upset about this, due to certain things about NEXT. There were some protests and a call for a boycott, while other people showed up on the stream to try and improve it.

The D.C. Court of Appeals overturned the FDA’s ban of the shock devices at JRC on the grounds that they were only being banned for a specific use and not banned entirely. 

Simon Baron-Cohen, a well-known autism researcher, started a project called Spectrum10k, where he aimed to get 10,000 or more DNA samples of autistic people. There was lots of concern from neurodiversity advocates over the ethical implications of this research and the lack of transparency. The project was frozen and then given the greenlight to go again by an ethics committee in 2022. 

Amidst the outbreak of the omicron variant of COVID-19, CDC director Rochelle Walensky made comments about how people dying of the omicron variant were "unwell anyway" and that was encouraging data to them. This caused a massive firestorm on social media. Several disability rights leaders met with Walensky to discuss the weight of her comments, as well as concerns the disability community had about the CDC's handling of COVID-19.

Andre’s Law was introduced in the state of New York. This law would make it so people in New York could not be sent to the Judge Rotenberg Center, which would curb enrollment significantly.