> If someone can’t communicate, how exactly are they supposed to participate fully in society?
It's not that autistic people cannot communicate, it's that we communicate differently.
For example, I cannot talk on the phone. I just can't. I could explain all the reasons why, but I feel very dismissed here so I'm not going to be vulnerable anymore, but suffice it to say it's something I cannot do, and a lot of autistic people cannot do.
This means people like us can't have jobs which require a lot of phone communication. Accommodations that would allow autistic people to communicate in their preferred way would lead to greater employment of autistic people, but such accommodations are rarely offered for various reasons.
It's other things too. For some people it's lights. For others it's a uniform. For others its noises. For instance, I can hardly go into grocery stores because they play loud music, there's a lot of noises from beeping registers, and the lights are bright and garish. All retailers are like this, and that's where many entry level jobs are. If I can hardly shop there without wearing sunglasses and headphones, then I could never work there because workers are not allowed to wear noise canceling headphones.
Then there are people who require service dogs. You'd think that would be a solved issue, but my friend was just denied entry to a place because of her legit service dog, not even an emotional support dog. They said she couldn't have one because she didn't look blind. Then what, she has to explain to some putz about her autism, expecting he'll understand? No, she backed off and went home and now she won't go out again. It took her that much just to go outside and she was turned away by some busybody, so it's back to being a recluse for a bit.
And that's another thing, is the world could be a lot more accepting of how ND people identify, that would go a long way too. My friend I just mentioned says that her experience as a transgender person is inextricable from her autism. I'm not sure what she means 100%, but also I do, autistic people have a complicated relationship with gender and sexual identity, and a lot of people are very very against those feelings. Autistic people who are transgender (there are many) have a hard time existing in public life because they are shamed, ridiculed, vilified, beaten, and even murdered for who they are. Do you think it's easy for someone who faces those dangers to be employed? There are many transgender homeless people who suffer as a result.
I could go on and on, but all of these things I've listed are ways in which autistic people are marginalized in society, and they don't necessitate "curing" autism to fix, or even really reorienting society as a whole. It's not because they cannot communicate, it's because they cannot participate fully in public life. The solution is to just let them participate in public life. To make things better for everyone involved, we can just be accepting of people's differences and not force them all to be one way, and support them when those differences mean they need help to survive. We can afford to do that as a society I think, why not, isn't that the point of the whole exercise?