>>"That's great, that's awesome, that's a really good project, you're doing great stuff here, but you can't have what you're asking for."<<

Because ...
* they think you're bad for even wanting/needing the thing.
* it would be a nuisance to them and they don't want to do it and won't be rewarded for doing it or penalized for not doing it.
* they are willing but have no money to do it.
* they are willing and have resources, but no power to do the thing.

These all have very different solutions.

Oh, I know. The trick is knowing which is which in any given situation. Each is their own special sort of dead end in the labyrinth. And I think I have run into all of them.

>> And then for people who think they might be on the spectrum (because if you are on the spectrum but don't know it, then you will feel not included by information stated to be for autistic people because you don't know whether it applies to you or not and don't want to assume, even though that exact feeling is in itself a sign that it probably does apply to you and did I mention Irony as a universal force?). <<

I would say, focus on traits and experiences rather than diagnostics. It doesn't matter if someone in a white coat gave you permission to have a problem. It matters if you hate being touched, don't like eye contact, find smalltalk painfully boring, nobody cares about YOUR passion, etc. and you need advice on coping with that from people who have successfully coped with it in different ways. That resource would be useful to everyone regardless of their documented mental status.

That's exactly what we've been doing. Describing traits, providing their names, and describing what they are not. (Mutism is not aphasia. I've had both, I know. Special Interests are not perseverations, nor are they savant skills. Meltdowns are not tantrums. etc.)

Part of the deal is to lay all this out, and say that "if this all sounds like I've got cameras in your house, consider looking into diagnosis, but see this other section about the pros and cons of making a diagnosis official."

Something else that would be super useful: "I wish I had known then" notes from older people about what would have helped them growing up.

I get lost very easily. It drove me and my parents nuts when I was little. We never did think of using a safety line. I wish we had, it would've saved us a lot of headaches. It's not a dog harness. It's a safety line, literally like climbers use in case of a snowstorm. Some people might hate it, but for others, it's a perfect solution. A GPS would drive me batshit (and also die almost immediately) but other folks seem to love those things. The site needs to list problems and multiple solutions.

That is also part of the deal. This is a guide written for autistic people, by autistic people. And we go out of our way to provide practical tips. Note that the site is, at this point, strongly targeted at uni students, so that's where the advice is going. Tips like "check out the campus before the start of classes, so you can get the lay of the land in a less stressful environment" and "however you travel to campus, try and plan time to sit and compose yourself before class, if you can". Links to available resources, so you don't have to go through several years without access to a resource that you could have had from day one had you known to ask, which of course you didn't and no-one else knew to tell you.

Everyone needs quiet spaces. Some people just need them more often than others. Look around at the noisy, awful world we've built and how many people have physical or mental stress conditions. We need to counteract that before everyone keels over. If you want to spread them, explain how they are useful to everyone: a place to go when you have a breakup, flunk a major test, hear of a death in the family, have just been groped, etc.

The Quiet Spaces list is going to be basically an overlay on the online map which can be accessed with a simple query. It won't be locked off to anyone who goes looking for it. (And most of those spaces are just this corner behind that building, or this section of library, or this corridor where no-one ever goes. This function will include notes and photos.

We're also in talks to have specific Autistic spaces, which are a lot like the quiet rooms you describe (only also set up with network access and power points). In these cases, we're worried about the tragedy of the commons, where NTs find that these rooms are perfect for studying, because they basically are, and monopolise them, so that autistic students can't get near them, or have to exert more spoons in kicking out abusers than they'd recover in them. These I think of more like disabled parking spots. Yes, everyone would love to use them, but they don't have to. We need them to function.

Honestly, I thought this bit was going to be the hardest, but it seems to almost want to happen.

Start a club. Student clubs often have leverage.

1) This isn't just about students. There is bugger all active support for autistic and other disabled students, but at least there's some. There is none whatsoever for disabled staff, and that can't be allowed to stand.
Moreover, 2) if there is a club of some kind, that's an invitation for the Chancellory to a) ignore the problem because "the club will look after it", and b) to trivialise the problem as something that can be dealt with by a club, rather than by some level of institutional change and systematic supports being put in place.

Anyone can hop on a prompt call and ask for autistic representation.

That sounds like a route to "Self-narrating zoo exhibit on call", rather than "You know the guy who runs that department? You know he's autistic, right?" What I'm trying to achieve is that the successful autists who are already out there don't have to hide it.