When Autism is an Employment Asset
In 2001 Ron Brix was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism often marked by intense attention to detail, single-minded focus and a willingness to work on something repetitively until perfect. Not coincidentally, Brix is a retired computer systems developer, a job that requires those same traits.
“My career would not have existed at all without the autism,” says Brix.
Now Brix sits on the board of Aspiritech, a non-profit Chicago company that trains high-functioning autistic people to work as testers for software companies. They recently launched a pilot program to train high-functioning individuals with autism as testers for software development companies. Their first client is mFluent, an iPhone application company near Chicago. The actor Ed Asner, whose son Charles is on the autism spectrum, is also on the board.
Aspiritech is modeled after the Danish company Specialisterne (the name means “the specialists”) which trains people with autism as specially skilled employees who are sent out as hourly consultants to companies to do data entry, assembly work and other jobs that many workers would find tedious and repetitive. Founded in 2004 by businessman Thorkil Sonne, the father of an autistic son, the company has 50 employees, 75 percent of whom are autistic. They say tests show their employees can be up to eight times more accurate at tasks like manual data entry than workers without autism.
Aspiritech founder Brenda Weitzberg’s 30-year-old autistic son, Oran, discovered limited social skills can limit job options even if you have a college degree. He has trouble interpreting nonverbal signals from others. But jobs at places like Target, Trader Joe’s and AMC Theater helped him learn to interact with others. He is one of three software testers who received training in Aspiritech’s pilot program. He is now teaching others and Aspiritech is now interviewing candidates for the next training round.
A professor at Copenhagen Business School, Robert Austin, says that redefining conditions like autism as differences, rather than disabilities, is important for a developed economy.
Brix says “”My understanding of autism is a person has both great gifts and deficits,” says Brix. “My whole career was based on skills that came as a result of, not despite, my autism.”
To read the original article published in written by Chris Tachibana, Ph.D., and published on Dec. 8, 2009 in msnbc, click here.
Photo of Ron Brix by Andrew A. Nelles for msnbc.com
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