Neurodiversity.Com: A Decade of Advocacy

Abstract

Kathleen Seidel created the website Neurodiversity.com (2004–2013) after her child received a diagnosis of autism and she became aware of the harmful language used to describe autistic people. The following chapter describes the development of the site as an autism research and advocacy portal and how it contributed significantly to public discourse by working to debunk misinformation about autism. She invited guest posts and wrote reports on her campaigns to counter false notions such as an autism-vaccine link and harmful, unsubstantiated treatments, influencing legal actions against individuals and products. Neurodiversity.com’s library of information remains available, to help increase effective support for autistic people.