Towards understanding autistic people: making outreach and public engagement activities more accessible

Ensuring that students and members of the public on the autistic spectrum have an enjoyable educational experience during outreach and public engagement activities holds some challenges for demonstrators/facilitators.

In this 3-hour workshop we will learn how to adapt existing outreach and PE activities to better enable all participants to have an educational and enjoyable experience working with us.

Session aims and objectives:

By the end of this session participants will:

• Know how to communicate with participants to ensure mutually satisfying experiences by adapting the language used.
• Know how to adapt physical environments to make them more accessible to outreach participants on the autistic spectrum.
• Be more confident that they can successfully communicate with participants who are on the autistic spectrum.
• Feel more able to identify participants who may be on the spectrum and adapt their approach accordingly.

This session is for:

Academic staff, research staff, doctoral researchers from any discipline, who are involved with outreach and public engagement activities.

This session will be led by:

Dr Pearl John (Outreach & PE Lead for Physics and Astronomy) and Dave Serpell Stevens - Senior Autism Practice and Training Specialist, Autism Hampshire.

Course Dates and booking:

availability for 2022/23 not yet confirmed - Southampton staff and students can get updates via our Sharepoint training pages .