On April 2, World Autism Awareness Day is celebrated, a disorder that is currently the most prevalent childhood disability, rather than Down Syndrome, childhood cancer and diabetes together.
Invisibility and misunderstanding are the main obstacles faced by people with autism, so The National Autistic Society, coinciding with this date, has released a video made with virtual reality that allows us to put them in the shoes of a child 10 years with autism, we can put ourselves in his place for a minute and feel his way of seeing the world.
An everyday and normal situation for many of us like touring a mall can be a real torture for a child with autism. For just a minute we put ourselves in his place and we can get to understand much better the anguish he may feel in a busy place.
Autistic people are hyper-sensitive to the stimuli they perceive in their environment. To be exposed to a huge amount of sensory information, as can happen in a walk through a mall, they can feel completely overwhelmed.
After a minute, the viewer's point of view changes and we can see the child from outside, as if we were passing by. His behavior, which seems to be having a tantrum, is usually judged, but after watching the video you can understand it better. And I don't count anymore. You have to see it because it is really very good, both from the technical point of view and the message it conveys and the lesson it leaves us.
Finally, I rescue the child's phrase at the end of the video: "I'm not bad, I'm autistic and I only receive too much information".
