Pictured: Adam Harris, Founder and CEO of AsIAm. Photograph by Andres Poveda.
Adam Harris is CEO of AsIAm, Ireland’s autism charity. Centred on the idea of building an equitable world for autistic people using evidence-based advice, resources, and guidance, the charity has worked with notable Irish businesses such as Primark, Grant Thornton and Core.
Interview and words by David Monaghan
Adam Harris is CEO of AsIAm, Ireland’s autism charity. Harris was honoured with the ESG Leader Award in April 2024 for his pivotal role in promoting inclusivity and understanding for the autistic community, a timely accolade that coincided not only with World Autism Month, but also the AsIAm’s 10th anniversary.
Founded in 2014, AsIAm was inspired by Harris’ drive to overcome widespread misunderstanding, and the need to elevate autistic voices into the national dialogue.
I spoke to Harris shortly before he received the award.
Background
Harris established AsIAm 10 years ago, around the time he finished school, based on his own experiences growing up as an autistic person in Ireland.
“I spent the first three years of my education in a special school,” he says.
“As the system began to change and become more inclusive, and based on the positive experience I had in special school, I was able to move to mainstream school when I was eight, and from there ultimately go to secondary school independently.”
Growing up, one of the things Harris found most frustrating was the lack of true understanding of autism, and how this ignorance influences the barriers autistic people face.
“And yet,” he says, “very often the discussion around autism had nothing to do with that. It was to do with how we change autistic people instead of how we change society.”
When Harris was first identified as being autistic, there was much less awareness of autism.
“People, certainly, for the most part, didn’t think they knew someone who was autistic, and we’ve seen a sea change in that regard. Now, you know, we do.”
AsIAm
Harris began to blog about his experiences. He began to meet more people who were autistic.
“[I saw] that the experiences I had had growing up and the frustration I felt in terms of not being understood as an autistic teenager were more widespread.”
This is how AsIAm was born. “And today we’re Ireland’s national autism charity, and we have a team of around 30, approximately half of whom are autistic or neurodivergent.”
AsIAm’s vision is to help create a society in which every autistic person is accepted as they are: “Equal, valued and respected.”
“We work towards that in two ways,” Harris explains.
“First of all, by directly providing support and building capacity amongst the autism community, we run group-based support programmes. We operate the autism information line and we undertake a lot of advocacy work on behalf of the community,
“The other half of what we do, what really makes us unique and … makes it very relevant to the business community, is that we address autism predominantly as an accessibility issue, and when people think about accessibility, they may think about physical access..
There are invisible barriers in how the world operates that prevent autistic people from having the same chance as their neurotypical peers.
Harris continues: “We operate a suite of programmes in workplaces with businesses … to give people the knowledge they need to become more accessible to reach autistic people.”
Same Chance
AsIAm has recently published its annual Same Chance report, “a kind of state-of-the-community report on autistic life in Ireland.”
The report contains the documented experiences of 1700 autistic people and their families, alongside an ‘attitude to autism’ poll that captures the views of a representative sample of 1000 Irish adults.
“What I saw, what I lived through as I grew up, was the country becoming more aware.
“And we now have a situation where over 80% of people are aware of autism as a diagnosis, the majority of us report knowing somebody who is autistic. Many of us report having someone who is autistic in our family.”
Yet this does not always translate into understanding and acceptance.
“As a teenager,” Harris says, “I would have felt that people knew I was autistic. They might speak, you know, a little bit slower. They might speak that a little bit louder. They make assumptions about what I could do or what I couldn’t do, but I suppose in our ‘attitudes to autism’ poll this year, we still see that.”
It seems that, even all these years later, people want to do the right thing, even if they do not know what that entails.
“This year in the poll, we described typical social interactions in which autistic people can experience barriers, things like having a conversation, but maybe you’re somebody who doesn’t make eye contact. Things like going to a cinema or theatre, but maybe you’re somebody who might not be able to sit still for a long period of time.
“Maybe it’s in the workplace asking a colleague to send you an email instead of speaking to you and across all these areas, we still see a huge amount of uncertainty on the part of the Irish public, and negative attitudes, not understanding why people may need to do some things differently.
“So I think while we’ve become more aware, we have a long way to go in terms of understanding and acceptance.
What can Irish business do?
What can Irish businesses do to create an equitable environment for autistic people?
“I think there’s a customer-facing piece, first of all,” Harris says.
“So the community is a huge market of people. At least one in 27 children of school-going age are autistic. That then includes, as well, family members. If an autistic person is unable to access a particular service, attend a particular venue, enjoy a particular good, in reality that excludes the whole family. So accessibility makes sense.”
It is essential for autistic people to avoid potential barriers to entry, but it is also good for business.
“A lot of the changes that autistic people need, whether it’s clearer communication, whether it’s a camera-sensory environment, whether it’s more structured … before accessing a service, this is actually good for so many others within our community and so many other minority groups as well.”
AsIAm offers support to businesses where the charity trains organisations to put in place accessibility measures.
“We’ve worked with some of the biggest brands in the country over the last 10 years, including Primark, Irish Jobs and SuperValu.”
“We’re seeing the first generation of autistic people diagnosed as young children ageing out of our school system, and what is really, really important now is that we look to the world to work.”
It is estimated that 85% of autistic people are unemployed or underemployed.
“It represents a huge loss of talent and perspective for the whole of society. Very often the measures in which we recruit straight away rule out autistic people from how we write job descriptions to how interviews operate.
“I spend a lot of time designing accessible experiences and interfaces for autistic people, but if I was asked to design something that wasn’t autism friendly, I would design a typical interview process based on answering abstract questions, dealing with the unknown and building the core with strangers.
“There’s a real need for us to look at the world of work and see how we can reach full employment. There’s so many people sitting at home with so much to offer in so many different ways.”
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