A review by readingpicnic
Supporting Students on the Autism Spectrum: A Practical Guide for Academic Libraries by Kerry R. Walton, Rachel M. McMullin

3.75

I found a lot of the content in this book very useful, especially since there isn't much literature on this topic (I will be digging into their references at some point). I will say that a few things bothered me while reading, such as the weird how to clock an autistic person vibes of a lot of it. The chapter talking about employing autistic people was also a bit strange with how it correlated autism with productivity in the workplace and talked about how certain employers seek out autistic people on purpose because they view their autistic traits as a utility (like the car wash example)? The statistics for how few autistic people are hired for jobs that they are qualified for, or hired at all, were dismal and saddening though. Some of the statements about autistic people's behaviors felt very generalizing and framed their strengths as surprising, like did you know autistic people have good traits, too! Here's how we can use those good traits to our advantage in the workplace and exploit them! I did write down a lot of the suggestions for making academic libraries more inviting and accessible for autistic people, but overall this book felt very off to me as an autistic person. I suppose it was written for a neurotypical audience, which is okay since they need to educate themselves and this is a good starting point, as long as they're critical of some of the wording.
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