The Autistics’ Guide to Adulthood: a co-design project

The Autistics’ Guide to Adulthood has been co-designed by autistic adults, for autistic adults.

What does co-design mean?

Co-design brings people together to design new products, services, and policies. Through co-design, autistic voices were able to shape the entire development of this free online resource.

How was the guide co-designed?

In the early stages of the Guide’s development, members from the autistic community were employed as part of the project team. The team were responsible for developing all content for the project, including copywrite, infographics and videos as well as other supporting material. 75% of the content project team are autistic.

Alongside this, community engagement activities such as a national survey in which more than 400 autistic adults chose to participate was completed. The survey was created to clearly identify the needs and desires of the border Australian Autistic community. Members of the Autistic community that specialised in certain areas were also interviewed to support the development of the modules.

Additionally, at the beginning of the project, a National Advisory Group was formed through an expression of interest process. The National Advisory Group supported the design, development and review of all content, and many other aspects of the project including the branding and the development of the name and logo for the project. 100% of the National Advisory Group are autistic. You can learn more about each of the members on the About Us page.

Diverse representation

The project team sought diverse representation of the Autistic community throughout the project, including in the Q&A and scenario videos you see throughout the Guide. Acting roles were widely advertised to the community, and through this 100% of interviewees are autistic and 7 out of the 8 actors appearing in video scenarios are autistic.