David Ireland, Dana Bradford, David Silvera-Tawil 

People on the autism spectrum can face challenges in dealing with a world they perceive differently to other people, no matter the severity of their condition.

Darren Devlyn, Fiona Sharkie

It's time to forget Dustin Hoffman's Oscar-winning role in Rain Man and embrace the more nuanced depictions of autism in recent TV shows.

For too long, Dustin Hoffman's Oscar-winning portrayal of Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man was the only touchstone many of us had for autism.

While Hoffman's performance was met with resounding applause, a consequence of the movie's success was that it created an autism trope that the movie and TV industries were loath to shake.

Sherryn Groch

Young Canberrans with high needs could be locked out of respite care by Christmas unless a last-minute solution is found to "critical" funding shortfalls under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

As families warn they will be forced to surrender care of their children without the regular break of respite, advocates are calling for an urgent intervention in the territory to address the "market failure" of services.

Michael McDowell

The first national guidelines for diagnosing autism were released for public consultation last week. The report by research group Autism CRC was commissioned and funded by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in October 2016.

The NDIS has taken over the running of federal government early intervention programs that provide specialist services for families and children with disabilities. In doing so, they have inherited the problem of diagnostic variability. Biological diagnoses are definable. The genetic condition fragile X xyndrome, for instance, which causes intellectual disability and development problems, can be diagnosed using a blood test.

Autism diagnosis, by contrast, is imprecise. It’s based on a child’s behaviour and function at a point in time, benchmarked against age expectations and comprising multiple simultaneous components. Complexity and imprecision arise at each stage, implicit to the condition as well as the process. So, it makes sense the NDIS requested an objective approach to autism diagnosis.

AN AUTISTIC teen victim of a savage assault at a Sydney shopping mall has a simple, but shocking, answer when asked why he was targeted by the thugs.

SHOCKING video has emerged of a young autistic boy being savagely bashed by a gang of youths at a busy Sydney mall.

The 15-year-old boy is seen on the video standing with his head down as he types a message on his mobile phone. One of the youths shoulders him and causes him to stumble, while others in the gang stand around and watch. And film the encounter.

Nance Haxton

National guidelines to help diagnose people with autism have been drafted for the first time in Australia by a team of experts.

The guidelines are the culmination of a year of research, and are designed to overcome the wide variation in diagnosis methods used between states and territories.

Rick Morton

The first set of national standards governing the diagnosis of autism was released yesterday for public consultation, part of a years-long plan to eradicate big variances in methods and rates of the condition.

Lead researcher Andrew Whitehouse said he hoped the guidelines would be adopted nat­ionwide to standardise diagnostic methods and that one day they would become mandated.