@Helena7319Doesn't sem like the autism is really impacting does it?
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and this is an incredibly offensive remark, which I think you should really retract.
Try living for 14 years with a non-verbal person who required, when he was younger, years of 40 hours a week of specialist care, just to get him to be able to communicate and to stop smashing his head on the floor in frustration hundreds of times a day (that phase lasted for years).
And then after that try the thousands of hours of work done with him for him to be able to go into a shop without stimming on the door for twenty minutes before entering. And to get him to sit on an aeroplane without causing near-mutiny among the other passengers (we literally had people refuse to get on a return plane with us after a holiday aboard). And to allow him to get in a lift without pressing all the buttons, every single time. And to get him to to walk down the street without skipping into people obliviously. And to take part in groups and social situations without causing havoc. And, yes to sit in a restaurant and have a meal without disrupting everyone's meal. Using whatever techniques we could, including the technology available to us.
Try all the tears, the sleepless nights (the years when he hardly slept and I slept on his bedroom floor), the disruption of family life year after year, and the tens and tens of thousands of pounds spent to get to the point we are at now.
Try even now being unable to go anywhere in public without many tuts and stares, unless you are incredibly well-prepared and organised and well-briefed for whatever is about to happen (and god forbid there is any change in plan).
Try especially having a dreadful chill run down your spine every time you think of what his life (and ours) would have been like without modern technology.
Educate yourself. Just because we make absolutely every effort to integrate our son into society despite his disabilities, doesn't mean his autism is not "impacting". Tell that to my bank balance, my cortisol levels or my son's father and siblings.
Maybe you should spend less time on MN and more with your child
You may notice that I am on MN now while he is at school (he is at a special school by the way, his autism impacts a great deal on him educationally), and in the middle of last night, when he was fast asleep but I could not sleep because I was worrying about something related to him. And how is this nasty retort an answer to my asking whether you are as offended and "upset" by physically disabled people using technology to help them as you obviously are by developmentally disabled ones?
I am beginning to think you may be a self-parodying caricature. Surely no-one is really such an oblivious shit to the families of disabled children?