Abstract

In Like Colour to the Blind, Donna Williams enters the most exposing and fragile realm of human interaction: her relationship and eventual marriage with someone with whom she can 'simply be', a relationship she terms a 'specialship'. But loving involves exposure, and to love she must expose the very things which protected her all her life - the masks she has hidden behind, the patchwork creations which stood in place of self.

In Donna's relationship with Ian, a man with difficulties related to her own, we watch the two of them break through their rock-solid emotional barriers and dare to defy all the rules imposed by the autistic condition of 'exposure anxiety'. Their struggle is told with Donna's characteristic humour, insight and sense of fragility.

Like Colour to the Blind is also the story of Alex, who was misdiagnosed as 'retarded' as well as autistic, and so gripped by 'exposure anxiety' that he has been virtually non-communicative all his life. Alex's fear of being left behind by Donna and Ian inspires him to push fiercely beyond the boundaries of his limitations and, in his own words, `to fly'.

Donna Williams was born in Australia in 1963. She was assessed at age two as psychotic, labeled disturbed and tested for deafness throughout childhood before being diagnosed as autistic in 1990. She was an international best-selling author with nine published books, an artist, singer-songwriter and screenwriter. One of the most well known people with autism in the world, Donna was a renowned international public speaker, a qualified teacher and had worked as an autism consultant.