If we had a society that would tolerate it and help the kid capitalize on it, then no one should care. But we have a society that doesn't, so the kid will be hurt by it. For dyslexia, it might not take a major change. Use fonts that work better. Not care as much about spelling and focus on their own talents. Allow them access to a spell checker. Stop using the same metric to measure their performance.
But if you take someone on the autism spectrum, the level of change needed so they won't be hurt by it seems like it would require a miracle somewhere on the scale between bringing back Elvis and world peace.
We can help them cope, we can help them leverage their advantages. But give our current society, there are some differences that are going to cause a lot of hurt and pain, both while growing and once they are adults. In those cases, anyone who cares about the kid should care.
I think you slightly misunderstood the GPs point: we should care about the dangers, but we should teach them to autistic children in concepts and ways they understand, and focus on teaching them how to emulate those behaviors, rather than saying that they're broken because they're missing it at the hardware level.
Why shouldn't the spellchecker be to dyslexic kids what canes are to people who have trouble walking -- an accepted solution to the problem, rather than shouting they should walk better. Well duh! They already want to walk better.
I don't disagree with GP on making life better. I'm suggesting that in some cases they are broken to an extent that even with emulation they will not reach normal functioning. A person may gain more mobility while using a cane, but we still put elevator requirements into building codes because we realize that not everyone is going to be able to use the stairs. But for some people, even with the 'canes' and 'elevators' we have available, there will be areas they can't get to, some which may be really critical.
The person shouting to walk better is an idiot only making their lives worse; we can all agree to that. But what of the people who think a cane is good enough and elevators aren't needed? Or those who think that elevators and canes are enough? When someone can't walk well, we should still care. Because even with all the canes and all the elevators, even with leveraging all the benefits their condition may give them, there are still things they don't have access to, and sometimes those can be quite critical parts of life cut off from them. So we should still care.
If we had a society that would tolerate it and help the kid capitalize on it, then no one should care. But we have a society that doesn't, so the kid will be hurt by it. For dyslexia, it might not take a major change. Use fonts that work better. Not care as much about spelling and focus on their own talents. Allow them access to a spell checker. Stop using the same metric to measure their performance.
But if you take someone on the autism spectrum, the level of change needed so they won't be hurt by it seems like it would require a miracle somewhere on the scale between bringing back Elvis and world peace.
We can help them cope, we can help them leverage their advantages. But give our current society, there are some differences that are going to cause a lot of hurt and pain, both while growing and once they are adults. In those cases, anyone who cares about the kid should care.