 after graduation.
“Although he can’t tie his shoes or buckle his belt to do a lot of things independently, he can do technology. And so I’ve been watching my son his own life playing on the computer, play videogames and I saw all this ability.”
So he paired up with Dan Selec, another parent of an autistic teen, to create nonPareil, which they see as the future for kids like theirs.
A Tech Mecca For Young Adults With Autism
NonPareil’s classrooms and labs are on Southern Methodist University’s campus in Plano. In a few short years, this place has become a sort of Mecca for young adults on the autism spectrum. More than a hundred students are enrolled or employed at the company.
When I visited graphic designers, programmers and coders were focused on a big screen with a 3D image of a barking dog eyeing a terrified cat on a tree branch.
One of the designers of the game, Mikel Crawford, jokingly described it as “Hangman, but without the lynching.”
For people like Crawford, high-tech jobs can be a perfect fit. Dr. Patricia Evans is a neurologist at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas. She says people with Asperger syndrome often have an amazing ability to hyper-focus on a task.
“They may really flourish at engineering type task or computer design where their interaction with people is somewhat limited. But if you have limited social skills to interview even that can be a real barrier to getting work, much less staying in that job,” Evans says.
There are more work opportunities for people with autism spectrum disorders than ever before, says Kathryn Parsons, chief program officer at Launchability, an agency that focuses on helping adults with cognitive impairments get jobs. It's placed employees at nearly 80 companies – from drug stores to high-tech companies to law firms.
“Any place where you have a consistent job or a somewhat repetitive job, is a great opportunity for a person with disabilities, so that’s a wide range of industries,” Parsons says. One place Launchability has helped folks find work is Alliance Data. Jim Pierce is vice president of corporate administration at the Plano-based Fortune 500 company.
“I really do feel like this is an untapped labor market,” he says.
Alliance Data has hired nearly a dozen people with cognitive disabilities such as autism. And Pierce says this isn’t a charity case.
“We’ve got this one guy, his productivity is three times as productive as the person doing his job who did not have cognitive disabilities before him, Pierce says. “And his error rate is 2 percent. He is 98 percent accurate. He’s a phenomenal worker.”
Pierce thinks it won’t be long before more national companies realize what they’re missing. In the meantime, the software company nonPareil is trying to keep up with growing demand here in Texas. It’s looking to build more campuses in Fort Worth and other cities across the state.