The School of Art is supporting AMAZE, the peak body of autistic people and their supporters in Victoria, with their #HoodieUp campaign to advocate for neurodiversity and accessibility. 21 April is the focus on the campaign but the campaign will run throughout April.

WHY HOODIE UP?
"Some autistic people experience sensory sensitivities and can become overloaded by stimuli in their environment — wearing their #HoodieUp means they can block out bright lights and busy environments which can help to calm them." — AMAZE 

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Post a selfie on social media wearing your hoodie with the #HoodieUp hashtag and @RMIT_art.

Educate yourself about autism and neurodiversity. 

Consider how we could make teaching practice more inclusive and accessible. An example of simple steps could include ensuring that all readings are OCR (optical character recognition) accessible — this means using resources that are 'full text online' that can be read by an TTS service (text to speech) rather than a scan of a book. 

WHAT WE ARE DOING
We will be posting about artists and alumni with autism, such as the incredible Prue Stevenson.

We are seeking advice from autistic and neurodiverse students on steps we can take to be more accessible and inclusive.

SOME RESOURCES
Steve Silbermann: the forgotten history of autism (video 13:48)

Shutting Down Bullsh*t about Autism 2 (video 5.26)

Armstrong 2015, 'The Myth of the Normal Brain: Embracing Neurodiversity', AMA Journal of Ethics

Autistic UK CIC: Nothing about Autism without Autistics 

Neurodiversity (wiki)

Photo: Alison Bennett