Employee Spotlight: Jim DeFrancesco
Describe your role at Yale University.
I am a Clinical Technologist in the OBGYN Reproductive Endocrinology lab. I process blood samples for patients going through IVF and other fertility treatments, monitoring their hormone levels to make sure everything is progressing as expected and sending the information to the doctors.
What inspired you to join the Disability Alliance at Yale (DAY)?
I was involved in an autism advocacy group when I was in college and it was a great experience. I knew I wanted to eventually continue that in some form after school and eventually discovered DAY. I wasn’t able to get involved for a while due to some personal circumstances, but after all of that was resolved I got the itch to get involved in disability advocacy again and officially joined DAY shortly afterwards.
Growing up on the autism spectrum, what is one challenge that had a lasting impact on you?
The biggest struggle for me was engaging socially with others. It’s relatively common knowledge that autistic people are usually introverts who tend to struggle in social settings, but I don’t think most people fully understand all of the permutations of how autism affects us in that way. Many social and communication skills that the majority of neurotypical people know intuitively are things I had to learn. Reading social cues and conversing in a conventional matter are things that I had to be taught. When you’re an awkward kid, other kids pick up on that quickly and some of them will ostracize you because of it and that, in turn, makes things worse and eventually it can become a kind of social death spiral. By the time I got halfway through high school, I became somewhat more comfortable around others and was able to make friends a bit easier, but even then I really didn’t start coming out of my shell until my sophomore year of college.
What kinds of advocacy or changes do you think are most important for supporting autistic individuals in professional or workplace environments?
To even be able to get them in the door, you have to look at your hiring process. If you have a job listing that is vague or uses a lot of buzzwords, you’re going to lose most autistic people right off the bat because they likely won’t even be able to decipher what the job entails. Many of us are also uncomfortable in the interview process, so I think that if the job in question doesn’t require a lot of interpersonal interactions, judging someone for being a little uneasy or anxious during the interview when they’re perfectly qualified isn’t fair. As for how to support autistic people on the job, support them with any reasonable accommodations they individually need. Accommodations are not special treatment nor are they wastes of resources. All they do is afford disabled employees the opportunity to perform their jobs at the same level as their non-disabled counterparts. For example, some people on the spectrum struggle with verbal directions, so a reasonable accommodation for them would be getting instructions in writing. As another example, some of us (myself included) have issues with short term or working memory, so allowing those people to record some non-sensitive conversations or giving them extra reminders about deadlines can go a long way.
How has autism influenced your experience in work or professional spaces?
Thankfully, the nature of my job allows me to work independently and without much interruption, which is an environment I thrive in. Because I work in a clinical lab, we are subject to a lot of regulations from both Yale and the state of Connecticut. It’s often said that autistic people think in “black and white” and that quality is a huge asset in my case because I’m a stickler about following protocol and doing things the right way. That may annoy some people, but it is the right thing to do, and I’ve even been told by my old boss that he always knew the lab was in good hands when I was working because of that aspect of my personality. In my case, my autism actually makes me more of an asset, and I’m blessed to have found a role that fits me so well.
What are your thoughts on the current state of autism research?
The problem with autism research is that most of it appears to be centered on prevention. There is an unbelievable amount of money being poured into trying to find a cure for autism or trying to detect autism as early as possible via something like prenatal screening. I think pursuing the former is a waste of time as I don’t believe a cure exists, nor do I believe autism is something that should be cured. The latter may have merits since it could make early intervention easier, but pursuing the prenatal test route brings us dangerously close to eugenics. I don’t necessarily think the people involved in the research have malicious intentions, but I am concerned that many of them are naive about how their research could be used and don’t understand that it can be applied in ways that bring unforeseen consequences. Instead, I would like to see more funding for researching new interventions and therapies for autistic people as well as changes to the social safety net to better accommodate us. While we definitely need more support for children on the spectrum, there is a shocking lack of resources for autistic adults due to a public perception of autism as a “kids’” disorder. Autism doesn’t just go away when we turn 18, we all still exist and have to go somewhere. Despite this, there are countless autistic people who get little to no formal support after they turn 21 even though they may still desperately need it. The world isn’t built for people like us and as a result, many autistic people are unemployed, homeless, and/or living in poverty without any way of getting the help they need. If there was more of a focus on researching ways to assist autistic people and providing more resources they could use, this problem likely wouldn’t be nearly as severe as it is. The scientific community needs to stop looking at autism as a disease to be controlled and instead view it as a natural neurological variation to be explored.