Ivanova Smith

I’m sorry you feel that way. Your contributions were important. You worked hard to keep the dangers of institutionalization in the conversation and that really matters. I appreciate your work, the #IACC is weaker without you.

‘I’d Be Left Alone’: Medicaid Cuts Put Disabled Patients’ In-Home Care at Risk | KQED After Congress approved roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, California advocates are worried about the future of home-based care covered by Medi-Cal.

“The federal Medicaid cuts are an absolute disaster for HCBS” & will push many people off Medicaid, leaving them w/o access to the only program that funds round-the-clock in-home support. “People will be forced into nursing homes or left to rely on unpaid family care.”

www.kqed.org/news/1207014...

I am furious that New York Times didn’t bother to recognize your IACC role, your representation for people with developmental disabilities mattered a lot. This is just an absolute crap article.

One of the dangers of normalization therapies like ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) is that they can interfere with parents knowing what their autistic kids’ legitimate likes and dislikes—and even personalities—are.

#autism #neurodiversity #BetterWaysThanABA

Thank you I appreciate it

Done. The original is deleted and a revised one is up

This is also ludicrous because IACC has had nonspeaking people like @neuroscientist.bsky.social and advocates for people with intellectual disabilities like @ivanova1994.bsky.social.

Yes that more accurate because I can speak many thanks

"Profound autism" label is profoundly useless Clustering autistic people under an arbitrary, demeaning label erases their individual humanity and needs.

Hey smartwatch users, please take heed of this warning about your data: “...the current administration's spread of misinformation around autism erasure will harm people who are autistic instead of helping them.” @ejwillingham.bsky.social in the latest TPGA newsletter:

buttondown.com/TPGA/archive...

I am actually speaking now I was non speaking first 5 to 7 years my life it take me several years learn English when I got here but it don’t matter I failed to get people understand we have rights. I just hope and Trust Elizabeth and Caden can get through to them.

Honestly it makes me feel like it was pointless for me get on #IACC all work I did there getting dismissed because I can talk now even though I was non varble and institutionized non of that matter when I can speak on it. I feel like failure.

Yeah. So many people like that think that if you can post on the internet, you must be Level 1 and not need any support.

I remember many times in autistic subreddits there would be an Autism Mom/Dad yelling at people any how they don’t understand what it’s like, because apparently they assumed everyone there was Level 1 (they weren’t), or telling them they don’t need any accommodations like their child does.

I love getting to work with her on AASPIRE

My Autistic Son Needs Extensive Supports. And Yet, I Oppose Labels Like "Severe Autism." — THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM Recently my teen autistic son and I walked around a fancy shopping center, while his sibling was at a nearby appointment (public strolls are not always something he can do, but that day he was up for ...

People may assume that anyone who claims to advocate for autistic people is a good person. This is often not true; many parent-run autism organizations actively oppose autistics on autism issues, specifically orgs like NCSA and @autismsciencefd.bsky.social:

thinkingautismguide.com/2019/01/im-p...

Also note that anti- #neurodiversity parent-led orgs National Council on Severe Autism (NCSA) and @autismsciencefd.bsky.social are NOT among the Autism and Disability Organizations at next week’s @aapd-disability.bsky.social National Roundtable Discussion:

www.aapd.com/autism-round...

That good thing we can’t let them take away our rights

Connecting on AAC Research Opportunities If you are a researcher or an AAC user interested in research opportunities!

Looking to connect on AAC Research Opportunities? @communicationfirst.bsky.social
has agreed to help facilitate more participatory research in the field by helping to connect researchers (whether or not they use AAC) and people who need and use AAC:

communicationfirst.org/connecting-o...

Autism diagnoses are on the rise – but autism itself may not be Autism is better known and diagnosed than ever before, leading to misconceptions that cases are skyrocketing.

On autism disinfo: "A lot of people want not only an explanation but something to blame […] The resulting vacuum has created space for simplistic ideas to spread—even those that lack evidence & have been repeatedly debunked." @autisticadvocacy.org's Zoe Gross, at BBC:

www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM Autism news and resources: from autistic people, professionals, and parents.

It took a week to (mostly) recover from attending #INSAR2025, the International Meeting for Autism Research (we loved being there; it was also exhausting).

We'll start posting our official conference coverage soon, at www.ThinkingAutismGuide.com. Stay tuned!

Research aimed at finding out what a few different stakeholder groups think often don't handle folks who belong to multiple stakeholder groups/have multiple roles very well. Makes it hard for autistic researchers, for example, or autistic parents of autistic kids.

#AutINSAR #INSAR2025

Nope forcing people into any medical treatment is not ethical and people think that ok are promoting medical model abliesm not all body react same to treatments force never ok!

Grant: Not including underrepresented autistics (with ID/HSNs) is AGAINST the #neurodiversity paradigm, which for autism is about the heterogeneity of the autistic community. We need to share power.

#INSAR2025

And w/o denigrating the urgency of HSN people’s needs, mostly speaking autistics like me lose speech more frequently than non-autistics may think. However short my periods of speech loss may be, at those times my self-advocacy skills dip too.

Square Canva graphic with a dark gray background. In the center is a white blob. At the top, red all-caps slanted text reads, "Today in Hell Yes, Research!" Next, black text reads, "“We should use the terms ‘non-speaking’ or ‘minimally speaking,’ because they are preferred over ‘nonverbal’ and ‘minimally verbal’ by autistic people these terms attempt to describe.” Next, dark gray all-caps slanted text reads, "Bottema-Beutel, Zisk, Zimmerman, & Yu." At the bottom, small black text reads, "tinyurl.com/NonSpeakingNotNonVerbal" and "@ThinkingAutism".

The terms 'non-speaking' and 'minimally speaking' are more useful than 'nonverbal' and 'minimally verbal,' as the latter "may hamper research, practice, & policy efforts aimed at improving the lives of the autistic people who purportedly belong to these groups."

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

What happened to your socialized medicine seem UK has same problems as US we more alike then not…….

I don’t understand where opponents of the Neurodiversity framework even get the idea that we are denying disability. I see myself as sometimes benefiting from the differences my autistic brain generates, and sometimes disabled by those differences. Many things can be true at once. #INSAR2025