The Scale of the Spectrum : Insight Into Autistic Experiences

This book draws on personal stories and insights from autistic people with high and low support needs to present these individuals as equally capable of offering useful and relevant insights, and by doing so argues against the dividing up of some autistic groups from others.

The Scale of the Spectrum is an accessible collection of 'story pairs' exploring the commonality of autistic experience. Each story pair tells an account of an autistic person with high support needs and/or their behaviour being misunderstood, alongside an experience of an autistic person with low support needs. Their stories are organised in two sections. In the first, understanding of an autistic person with high support needs is discovered through the experience of a person with low support needs; in the second, an autistic person with low support needs comes to better understand their experience by relating to a person with high support needs. The contributors discuss diverse challenges including food, communication, time management, pain, sensory overwhelm and mental health. Throughout the book, the contributors argue for a unity of overall autistic experience and ask the question of if people at 'opposite' ends of the autism spectrum are really so different from each other.