Co-design with autistic university students

What is it about?

Autistic university students co-designed a toolkit that provides information and strategies for managing the transition into higher education. The paper reports how the co-design process was planned, what activities were done and how the young autistic people engaged with these activities. The toolkit is a key output from the EU-funded Autism&Uni project, involving organisations from 5 countries (www.autism-uni.org).

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Why is it important?

Often autism is seen through the lens of deficits - things autistic people cannot do. In this research we adopted a strength-based model by looking at the contributions autistic people made to the co-design activities, and the ideas this unlocked when creating a toolkit that promotes self-advocacy and positive action. Several assumptions about capabilities and preferences of autistic people were challenged in the process.