World Autism Awareness Day

It's been almost exactly four years since my previous post on autism, Chess, Autism, and Youtube (April 2017). I started that post saying,

April is National Autism Awareness Month.

The four words in italics led to a link for a page with the same name on autism-society.org. The link still works, but the page is now titled Autism Acceptance Month; 'Awareness' has morphed into 'Acceptance', and the word 'National' has disappeared. That tells me the world is making progress on this complex and difficult subject.

It's easy to presume that the following video, on YouTube's FIDE chess channel, was scheduled to coincide with Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month. The welcome is by Dana Reizniece-Ozola, FIDE Managing Director; the introduction is by Anastasia Sorokina, FIDE Vice President.

Chess for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder | FIDE Seminar (1:40:40) • '[Published on] Apr 2, 2021'

The description of the video says,

The first FIDE Introductory Seminar "Chess for children with an autism spectrum disorder. How chess can help children who have autism" took place on March 29 and was attended by 130 representatives of chess federations and chess academies from all over the Globe.

For more about the seminar, see How can chess help children with autism? (fide.com; 'All the presentations are also available for download'). It starts,

The question [in the title], particularly relevant today on World Autism Awareness Day, was answered by a group of five lecturers during the first FIDE Introductory Seminar "Chess for children with an autism spectrum disorder. How chess can help children with autism” held on March 29.

So the seminar took place on World Autism Awareness Day. Got it!