Essentially, this means:
Autism is a neurological disorder; it is not a mental illness. The way I like to think of this is: mental illnesses are computer viruses; neurological conditions are different operating systems. A mental illness (such an anxiety or depression) is not part of a person's true self, just as a virus is not part of a healthy operating system. A computer running the Linux or BSD operating system is different from a computer running Windows. There is a lot of overlap between what the two systems can do and neither is better than the other. But if you use a Linux machine expecting it to behave exactly like a Windows machine, you're going to have a bad time.
There is no 'real me' trapped inside a shell of autism. This is part of who I am as a person. Most autistic people find the idea of being 'cured' abhorrent, because we would cease to be ourselves.
I honestly don't care whether you refer to me as an 'autistic person' or as a 'person with autism'. I totally get the logic behind why the former is better, but I have, like, actual problems. Just don't call me a spacker unless you're autistic too.
As a point of interest, 'Asperger's' no longer exists as a separate diagnosis from autism. The term was coined by Hans Asperger in an attempt to prove that his autistic patients were worthy of not being executed under the Nazi regime. 'Would this patient be productive under a fascist regime?' is no longer considered a valid metric for diagnosing anybody!
Please don't refer to me as 'high-functioning' or 'mildly autistic'. I'm just autistic. Most autistic people have a mix of traits that would seem 'high' or 'low' functioning in isolation. I could (but I won't) give you a list of cherry-picked traits that I don't show at work, which would make me seem a 'low-functioning' person.
I'm often told I don't 'seem' autistic. This is because I'm very good at what the autistic community calls 'masking'. Masking is basically 'pretending to be a person'! I can do it but it is tiring, because I have to consciously suppress behaviour that comes naturally to me.
Verbal communication (including the phone) is hard for me, because I don't comprehend most prosody or body language, and I find it hard to retain spoken instructions in my short-term memory. If you have more than 1 or 2 sentences to say to me, I would prefer to receive this as written communication - otherwise I will probably ask you to repeat yourself a lot!
When I'm listening to verbal communication, I have to simultaneously parse incoming information and separate it from 'filler' words, while remembering all the salient points that have already been said. And I have to do all this on a delay of about half a second while I work out what words the sounds are forming. It can be exhausting.
In addition, I find it very confusing when two or more people talk at once, because I can't isolate either voice and both sound like gibberish.
Sometimes I genuinely cannot switch tasks at short notice. When I am engaged in a task, it feels as though tendrils of thought are extruding from my skull and meshing with the work in front of me. If I have to stop or switch tasks, I need time to unfurl and retract all my tendrils. If I am made to switch prematurely, it feels as though my tendrils have been ripped out of my head, and this causes me to draw a complete mental blank and be unable to restart or resume a task for a while.
If you need to speak to me while I am engaged in a task, I find it very helpful to be asked something like 'Can I interrupt you right now, or do you need a moment to wrap up?'
The majority of autistic people are not actually change-averse; we are uncertainty-averse. My apparent (and unapparent) functioning is dependent on extensive mental planning, preparing, and being able to anticipate what happens next. This is why I become very confused by vagueness, sudden topic changes, and lack of context. When people don't say exactly what they mean, it feels like trying to follow a recipe in which all the ingredient quantities have been replaced with the words 'enough, but not too much'.
You might think you are being polite by not being direct, but I honestly prefer receiving direct instructions with an intended agent (me) and a deadline attached.
Good request: 'Document X needs reformatting. Anna, can you do that by Friday?' This is a clear instruction for me to do something.
Bad request: 'Document X needs reformatting.' I might not realise this is meant to be an instruction, because it's a factual statement, like saying 'the sun is shining' or 'you have five toes'.
Good request: 'Can I get a soft copy of Document Y?' This clearly indicates what you want to happen.
Bad request: 'When someone asks you to edit Document Y, what do you normally do?' This doesn't actually tell me what you want to happen, and we will probably go back and forth a bit before I work out what it is you need.
Please don't touch me without asking first. I need to be able to brace myself for it, and I need to be able to say 'no, I can't handle being touched right now'. Being touched without warning feels very bad. Like, flesh-crawlingly bad. This includes leaning on or touching my chair while I'm sitting in it.
The organisation 'Autism Speaks' is a hate movement. Please don't ever donate to this organisation. It's a eugenics movement masquerading as a charity.