Welcome to our new website

Our website is visited by millions of people every year, making it a vital resource for autistic people and their families. Our new design makes our advice and guidance even easier to find, helping you get the information you need as quickly as possible. We hope you like it.

: We asked autistic people and their families what they wanted from our new website and spoke with autistic digital specialists to help improve accessibility. We shared the development of the new website with our autistic colleagues forum and autistic members of staff design and write for the website.

: Websites can be overwhelming for autistic people. They can be very bright, have too much movement and feel like too much is going on at once. That's why we have a calm button at the top of the page and if you sign in and create an account, there are more options to change to suit your needs.

: Autism and the challenges that autistic people face can be difficult to understand. Getting a diagnosis and the support you or your family member are entitled too can be made more difficult by jargon and confusing language. Our aim is to keep everything we write as simple and easy to understand as possible. Sometimes we have to use the language used by professionals and we’ll be adding a glossary to those pages.

: Our old website had a lot of photos on it. While it was good to show autistic people leading their lives, we had feedback that some of the photos were confusing. Because of this, we have fewer images on the new website and we’ll try to make them as meaningful and relevant as possible.

Our new website includes information on dozens of topics, and we hope you find this helpful.

We will be reviewing these pages to reflect the latest research, practice and the views of autistic people, their families and professionals. How often we carry out a review will depend on the topic: how much of a priority you tell us it is and whether there is significant new thinking, research or other information that we need to include.

We are also gradually introducing guides under each topic, tailored to the perspective and needs of different people, particularly autistic adults, families and carers, and professionals.

The advice and guidance information has been transferred from our old website. Please bear with us while we complete the transfer of some topics and check for broken links etc as quickly as we can. We hope this will not cause you any problems.

Check out our advice and guidance.

Accessibility

The three main sections of our new website

Advice and guidance

Here you can find a wide range of information about autism – from what autism is, to diagnosis, to socialising and relationships.

Find out more

What we do

Here you can find out about our activities and services – from our volunteer-led branches and social groups, to our supported living services, and our training and conferences.

Find out more

How you can help

Here you can find out how you can get involved with our charity and help create a society that works for autistic people – from campaigns to fundraising to volunteering.

Find out more

A big thank you to ...

... all the autistic people and their families who took part in the research for and development of our new website.

We want it to do an even better job than the old website at providing you with the information and advice you need to help get a diagnosis, find a school or job, or deal with mental health issues.
We want it to fully reflect how our charity now talks about autistic people and autism. We made some of these changes when we rebranded in 2018 but a new website means we can make all the changes we need to.
We want to make it easier for you to find out about our services and other autism services through an improved Autism Services Directory – and how you can get involved with our campaigns, fundraising and volunteering.
Our previous website was built in a very old content management system (CMS) which will stop working at the end of the year. So, we’ve invested in a new website and in-house support which will have the added benefit of saving our charity money. We’ll be able to spend the money we save on delivering more and better information and support.