Amelia Schabel graduated from high school five years ago. She had good grades and enrolled in community college. But it was too stressful. After less than a month she was back at home, doing nothing.
"I did go to a community college for a semester, but that definitely was not for me," she says.
Schabel has Asperger's syndrome, a disorder on the "high functioning" end of the autism spectrum.
Although symptoms and their severity vary widely, the majority of young adults with autism spectrum disorder won't make it to college and won't get a job after they graduate. This year alone, 50,000 adolescents with autism will turn 18.
"I can look someone in the eye and talk to them," she says, "but if someone treats me in a way I don't think I deserve to be treated, I'm not going to react well. I may lash out, I may not speak to them, I may just glare."
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| nonPareil Institute |
"Although [Andrew] can't tie his shoes or buckle his belt to do a lot of things independently, he can do technology," Moore says. "He's a digital native."
"They may really flourish at engineering-type tasks or computer design, where their interaction with people is somewhat limited," . Dr. Patricia Evans, a neurologist at Children's Medical Center says.
"We've got this one guy, for example; his productivity is three times as productive as the person doing his job who did not have cognitive disabilities before him. And his error rate is 2 percent. He is 98 percent accurate. He's a phenomenal worker," Pierce says.
One Fortune 500 company that has begun hiring people with intellectual disabilities in North Texas is Alliance Data. Jim Pierce, vice president of Corporate Administration, says "this is an untapped labor market." He has hired a dozen people with intellectual disabilities.
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