ooohh, Bink, there's some good reading on asd but yurt and co can do lots to help too if you post over in sn section. My conclusions are all from ermm..[counting] thirteen years of running educational services for people with ASD, at both ends of the spectrum and all stages between.
The best info I had was on a training session at a conference yonks ago, where the speaker was a gent who's the absolute dogs wotsits on autism and AS. He said that if you work with all folk on the spectrum as if they are really disorganised, they don't know where the beginning or end of anything is and don't know where to go next, then they are likely to be happy if you can help make sense of it for them. Doing it for them entirely is not our aim - to give them the skills and as many 'props' as they need to do it themselves is far more useful!
Gist is - they hate change of any sort, which includes every transition time in the day. Which can get pretty stressful when you think about it. Again if you apply the idea that they can not, or at best have limited ability to think abstractly, and therefore don't know what the heck you mean by "swimming pool" or "school" from "tin of spaghetti", then they become anxious. If there's a picture of it, we're fine. Knowing where things start and finish is huuuuge, I think because of the sequencing element of it. It manages changes for you if you know when 'stop this, start that' happens. In order to deal with even small changes they need plenty of warning, and lots of time to process it [understand it] and 'own' it. we had a young lad who used to have a massive problem every time he got to the swimming pool, would have a screaming session in the changing room, curtains pulled off cubicle and all sorts - till we figured out he had no idea what to do once he got in there. we made him one of those picture strips, showing 'take off...' trousers, shirt, socks, undies [put in the order that he'd usually prefer to do it] and then put on...swim shorts. Each thing done, take the picture off the velcro on the card ("gone,finished") which leaves you only the info that is still on there to have to deal with. He was sorted. These days he just has a small list in a notebook. Independence at last. Basically if you can take away as many of the 'variables' to a situation as possible and give the person with ASD a set of information about what they are expected to do in what order, they are much more able to cope with things. Unpredictability is what they hate. Some folk do well with a set of photo's in a small 6x4 photo album, turning over each page when something's finished with. Experience says that whatever you come up with, it needs to communicate that whatever we're doing now has ...x... coming after it, and when what we're doing now is done, it goes away.
Don't know if this lot makes a word of flippin sense - sorry!! my email's on my profile, if there's anything i can help with
have a look this and this may give you some pointers, but bottom line is that what we use most is a simple digital camera and portable printer - oh yes and yards of velcro.