Please, autism researchers, study these.

Quite a bit of autism research is what I would call, to put it delicately (as in, I am neither screaming nor swearing at it), abled nonsense. I definitely needed to know that my asexuality as an autistic AFAB is a testosterone-related disorder. I also needed to know that I only think I'm trans (nonbinary to be specific) because autism is an extreme male brain. And it is of the utmost importance that I know I am incapable of humor in any form, but especially sarcasm. Autistic satire is definitely not a thing, right?

Oh, wait. All of that is abled nonsense. So is the idea that the optimal outcome is a loss of diagnosis, by the way. I'm most able to do the stuff I care about when I am visibly autistic rather than spending energy on not being so. Dani briefly achieved so-called indistinguishability, an older "optimal outcome" and it was not worth it. (Also I'm the friend.)

I would like to see research that is not abled nonsense. I especially would like to see more of this research being done by autistic people, because no, I don't think we need neurotypical people interpreting the results in order for them to be valid. I'm with Nick Walker here: when we depend on less-marginalized researchers to "discover" our hard-earned truths, we're reinforcing the idea that the knowledge we've figured out for ourselves as a community isn't valid. Which communities get to have valid knowledge?

That said, there are things I'd like to see researched more. Not necessarily in the current structure (because let me tell you, I expect someone like, oh, nearly any non-autistic autism researcher who presented at the Coalition on Autism and Sign Language where I threw myself into a wall repeatedly, to make a complete mess of the topic.) And preferably by autistic people with experiences relevant to the topic.

1. Inconsistent speech and AAC support for autistic adults.
   
   I'm an adult. I can speak (usually.) When I can't speak, I use AAC. AAC research seems to be focused on two groups: adults with neurodegenerative disabilities, and young children. Autistic adults who can sometimes speak and sometimes not are neither of those categories, but there's a lot of us. This might be more common than "always has speech" is, among autistic adults, but thanks to behaviorist approaches and the assumption that "can sometimes" is identical to "can consistently" given a sufficiently strong motivator, professional types tend not to get this. I would like to see research on what supports, including AAC, tend to make communication easier/more effective for us.
   
2.  Employment supports that are neither sheltered workshops nor "we think they're all good at technology" start-ups that might pay well but are still pretty segregated.
   
   Sheltered workshops can (and often do) pay below minimum wage. Autistic people, like all disabled people, are more likely to live in poverty than abled people. Are these facts connected? You bet! Programs like Specialisterne, on the other hand, are founded by (usually parents) based on a stereotypical idea of "autistic strengths" that usually means technology work. Or Microsoft has a program to hire autistic workers now. These can be useful, if you're an autistic person who wants to be working in technology. I worked an IT job for a while. It was a good experience in many ways. I also never want to do that again. I like writing. I like teaching. I like art. I've earned money on all these things (mostly teaching) and would happily continue to. These are not the specific jobs you're going to come up with if you're a non-autistic person trying to provide employment support for autistic people.
   
   So maybe, just maybe, we need to take a look at employment supports that are not limited to a specific kind of job. (Or, you know, look at more kinds of jobs? Because the needed supports will vary based on what kind of job it is.)
   
3. Burnout.
   
   After reaching some ideal of indistinguishability and hanging out there for a little bit, or just after the demands get to be too much even if we were never indistinguishable, we can hit a breaking point. Then everything is way harder, we have way less energy, and our abilities shift. Sensory overload might be more of an issue. What can we do to make this less likely to happen? What supports would help a person going through this? People dealing with this have written about it, both during and after. Getting some idea of what tends to help us vs. what tends to make things worse would be great for anyone who deals with this in the future. Even better if we can help people not have this happen. Burnout is not fun.