Better Together: Neurodiverse Community Members Partner with TWU Students to Conduct Autism Accessibility Audits

Abstract

Texas Woman’s University School of Occupational Therapy has teamed up with crew members from nonPareil Institute to complete autism-friendly audits at a variety of locations within the community. The goal is to assess the strengths of the environment, inform individuals about specific aspects of the environment, and make suggestions for potential modifications. These audits contain sensory, communication, and social factors to attain information in order to approach ways to create as neurodiverse of an environment as possible. This participatory involvement can improve our communication with the autism community and help create workshops and training materials that emphasize abilities rather than disabilities. We believe in developing partnerships, promoting decision making, and empowering and involving individuals with autism. Therefore, our future endeavors with these audits is to prove an opportunity to share our knowledge with the collaboration from nonPareil to extend solutions on how to create sensory friendly environments.