No one would think this was an appropriate “special needs education” for visually impaired students these days. The world has changed and now we regularly see visually impaired people in a huge variety of jobs (although most remain unemployed), in universities, in art galleries, on the radio and TV.

But for our kids and for adults on the Spectrum, we’re still expected to accept whatever crumbs of help society deign to give us. I want autism specific education for all autistic children – in mainstream classes, in specialist units or in specialist schools, just not the way it is done now, for most kids. Special Ed teachers aren’t necessarily knowledgeable about autism either.

OTOH, problems such as Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Executive Dysfunction, and Semantic-Pragmatic Disorder etc. are so common in autistics, any teacher or career that takes them on should be trained in how to deal with them. There are many things which your child has in common with other autistic children. Instead of learning on a case-by-case basis, a proper training course would give this teacher the opportunity to learn information that is general and thus allow her to concentrate on the aspects of this child that are specific to him.