Adam Harris
speaker
1,538 appearances
18 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard yesterday
Adam Harris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 17 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 5.
Appearances
Certainly over the course of my growing up, awareness of autism had increased greatly.
but it was still very much in the context of when autistic people face barriers in society, those barriers are because you're autistic, not because you live in a world that isn't designed for autistic people.
OK.
And I guess growing up at times, it felt a little bit like being a member of a secret society, I think I've said before, because on the one hand, you know lots of people in your community who are autistic.
You go to the same groups and therapies and supports.
But at the same time, there was a reluctance to talk about it.
There was still a pervasive stigma around autism.
And I think as well, there was a reality at times that the discussion of autism was still very much framed around deficit as opposed to around difference.
So when I was in secondary school, I set up a blog and I began to write about my experiences.
And when I was only a teenager, so it would have been the Christmas that I was in fifth year, I called a public meeting.
So I invited...
Through my blog, I invited people to come to Dublin to talk about what, I suppose, an online space in which autistic people's voices could be heard and in which people could learn, not just to be aware of autism, but to understand autistic people, what that could look like.
So very kindly, the international bar in Dublin let me use the basement of their bar.
And we had what essentially became the first meeting of As I Am.
And then over the kind of coming year or two when I was still in secondary school and we were preparing for the launch of the charity, a couple of things happened.
So on my blog, I would write about experiences growing up that I thought were unique to me.
You know, that feeling of isolation, that feeling of, you know, exhaustion trying to fit in, that feeling of the barriers you're facing coming from other people not understanding.
But as I began to hear from autistic people and as I began to get invited to speak at meetings around the country or to give media interviews, I discovered that those experiences I had growing up were shared experiences by so many autistic people.
It was an incredible experience.
And I think it really showed that, you know, that adage of the disability community, nothing about us without us.
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