1. The Autistic Guide to Starting College by AsIAm
This is a resource-packed website for autistic students by the Irish charity AsIAm. It includes videos of college students answering questions and a range of downloadable resources offering advice on so many topics, such as:
- Communication and navigating social situations at university.
- Revising for and managing exams.
- Travelling and using public transport.
- Doing the dishes.
- Cooking a meal (they have lots of easy recipes!)
- They even have a 360 degrees virtual tour of a college campus!
2. Preparing For Adulthood by Ambitious About Autism
Ambitious About Autism have a collection of resources informed by and/or made by young autistic people which cover a wide variety of topics. In this section, they have information on:
- Thinking you might have autism
- Making sense of your autism diagnosis as a young person.
- Further education and training.
- Work experience and employment.
The further education and training section is very comprehensive, and one of my favourite parts is definitely the Youth Patrons’ Blog. This blog details two young people’s lived experiences of education and accessing supports they needed, such as Disabled Students Allowance (DSA), which is a government grant available in the UK to help disabled students.
3. Autism&Uni Toolkit by various universities
Autism&Uni is a European Union funded project developed at Leeds Beckett University which created a format through which universities could develop and display resources to support autistic students. For example, UCL, University of Bath, and University College Cork, as well as many other universities across the EU have developed these toolkits. The toolkits typically includes information on:
- Preparing for university.
- Transitioning to higher education.
- How to access supports and reasonable adjustments.
- Healthy living.
- Studying remotely and studying on campus.
- What university is really like.
- Accommodation.
- Exams and studying.
- The social aspects of university.
- Student stories about their own experiences at university.
Bonus: Autism Awareness / Acceptance by the University of Edinburgh AS Group
This is something I got to help with and was created by my university’s autism spectrum group in April for Autism Awareness / Acceptance month and I just really wanted to include this here as a wee bonus. Not only does it provide some wonderful suggestions on ways to navigate the struggles of university life we may have as autistic students, but it also is just a fantastic resource to give to your place of education, as it suggests lots of ways to help better understand autistic students and make things better for us. The resource includes:
- An introduction which outlines what autism is.
- A guide to important terminology.
- A page on the struggles autistic students may have and possible solutions.
- Myths and misconceptions about autism.
- A list of resources the authors, who are all autistic students, recommend.
- An appendix of memes!
The Author
This post is made up of some resources emailed in to Practical Neurodiversity (both the Autism&Uni Toolkit at UCL and UCC were emailed) and some resources I have personally like. It was made by @pallyallywrites who created this space and who has her own personal blog, pally.ally.writes, where they write about psychology, neurodiversity, and life.
Practical Neurodiversity 