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Hope Project - La Pilar Learning Centre - Kathy Sinnott
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People with autism sometimes experience the world in mono. That is using one sense at a time. If they look, they may not be able to effectively listen and vice versa. If they touch, they may not be able to register the other senses efficiently.

People with ASD can have Scoptic Sensitivity or Irlen Syndrome. They may be able to read and retain information on a coloured background but not on white. The colour that enhances visual processing varies from person to person.

Repeating patterns can be difficult for some people. A professional with Aspergers Syndrome, complained that he found it hard to work in an office with Venetian blinds. He got "caught in the pattern and found it hard to keep his attention on his work.

Autism can be accompanied by anything from physical dysfunction to amazing agility. I remember watching a man-size twelve-year-old boy racing across a bungalow sitting room from one picture window to the other like a bull charging. At the last moment, he would perform the most delicate pirouette, twirling on his toes without a totter. After a moment stretched and suspended, he bent over and raced head down for the other window. I waited each time for the crash. After about five charges, I noticed that the other mothers and fathers in the room did not even seem to notice. He continued for about half and hour. My son Jamie on the other hand until recently would have found the walk from one window to the other an effort.

Possibly the most important consideration in making a building accessible to persons in the autistic spectrum is limiting the buildings toxicity. Autism and related disorders are medical conditions. One of the key dysfunctions is in the body's detoxification systems. These children are easily poisoned. They attract heavy metals like a magnet. Almost every cheap and readily available building material is harmful to them. Careful thought has to go into the selection of materials. We originally wanted to build La Pilar of wood until we realised that if we used more than a certain percent of wood, we would have to treat it with fire retardants. These chemicals would make wood more dangerous to a person with autism that some of the building materials we had rejected as toxic. I will stop here; hopefully this is enough to get you drawing.

Before I leave autism behind, there is another option. Though we must find ways to make life in our buildings easier for persons with an autistic spectrum disorder, we do not need to keep inflicting these disorders on children. We could try to avoid autoimmunity by reversing the trend to increasingly chemicalised environments. We could also resolve to respect and value the immune systems of babies and children. We must relearn to allow the immune system to develop naturally, if necessary supporting but not artificially orchestrating or interfering with its development.

In the meantime, architects, engineers, builders and planners face the enormous challenge of including everyone. It is vital that the challenge of accessibility is taken up and met successfully. In the process, you will gain more than experience and fees. If you design from the perspective of the disabled persons for whom you are designing, you will come to an appreciation of personhood itself. You will get beyond the mechanics of entering a building to the importance of being welcome, beyond meeting room and conference areas to the importance of communication, beyond kitchen and cooking and ventilation regulations to the importance of breaking bread. Special needs offer you the opportunity of transforming your job into a vocation.

Kathy Sinnott is the secretary of the Hope Project and mother of Jamie who has autism.