The stigmatization of autism is becoming an important determinant of mental health and wellbeing for autistic people and their families (Botha et coll., 2020). The stigmatization results in very little information on autism in the general population. Also, the stigmatization towards autistic people can be a barrier to the access to services, employment and their inclusion into society. The heterogeneous nature of autism and the invisibility of the disability makes public awareness more difficult. Research shows that efficient information and opportunities for exchanges with autistic people can improve our knowledge and our attitudes towards them. The health literacy framework (Sørensen et coll., 2013) can offer a way of providing, or at least offer understanding of, such information, and to evaluate and be used for better communication with autistic people, facilitate their acceptance and societal inclusion. In order to achieve this, our team has developed an innovated virtual reality (VR) tool in collaboration with autistic people. We based it on two theoretical models, the patient-as-partner approach (Pomey et coll., 2015) and the participative research with autistic people (Nicolaidis et coll., 2019). This tool represents the autistic perspective based on personal stories recommended by the autistic team members themselves. They also acted as protagonist in the recording of the tool.

In this VR capsule, the user is guided to put themselves in the autistic persons shoes and to be immerse into the autistic person’s virtual environment and to live their everyday reality. This VR capsule is intended to increase knowledge of autism in the general population. To sensitize them by giving the opportunity to experience the same social and sensorial situations as an autistic person (hyper-sensory, detail oriented, communicational issues, decoding emotions, etc.). The goal is to use this information to reduce the myths and prejudices, to better understand autistic people, to accept them more, and to better communicate with them. A randomized clinical trial is currently in place in order to evaluate the efficiency of this tool in improving knowledge in autism.