If you are an ABA professional or you work with autistic people in a direct service capacity, the fact that you are on this page is already a win. There are remarkably few providers who actually value the opinions of the people they are serving, so I want to commend the ones who actually made it here. My opinions on ABA therapy are mixed, having been a provider myself, but in general I believe it to be over-prescribed and ineffective in the majority of cases. 

The biggest piece of advice that I can offer to active and aspiring professionals is that you read pages like this that will give you the autistic perspective. Then, evaluate your school or business to ensure that you are actually benefiting the people you are trying to help. Your program would ideally have more autistic people on staff than neurotypical people, but this is often not the case. The next best thing would be to hire autistic people to work as independent contractors to evaluate your services. 

Next, examine the environment that you are providing services in. No matter what kind of service you are providing, the environment needs to be highly customizable to the individual client, especially as you are beginning services. Programs can be added later to reduce the client’s sensitivity but during evaluations and the early stages of services they should be able to control the lighting, temperature, and smell of the room you are working with them. There should be ample activities that cover a wide range of interests and age groups and the client should have complete access to all of them. This is part of effective ABA protocol, but other types of interventions might not include this acclimation process. 

The next piece to evaluate is your methods of data collection and intervention. Are you including the client's opinion in what areas they want to improve? Are you considering your own biases as a neurotypical person in regards to socially acceptable behavior? Does your business require that all types of stimming be reduced, or only stimming that is self-injurious? How long are you able to spend with the client before writing up intervention plans? Are your diagnostic and intervention materials inclusive of race and gender? By answering all of these questions, you can begin to determine if your services are truly for the benefit of the client. 

In order to improve the service options that are available to autistic people and their families, neurotypical people need to be willing to adjust their expectations to match their client’s. Most people are able to communicate what they want and need in some way, so make sure that you are offering multiple forms of accessible communication. You are likely working in this field to try to help people, so make sure that you are truly benefiting your clients by revisiting these questions periodically. If you are in an executive position, these inquiries can help you make structural decisions that will gain and retain more clients in the long run.