Street wise

There's a new girl on Sesame StreetCreated by Children's Television Workshop and using Jim Henson's Muppets (originally created in 1955), it first aired in 1969, it is shown on the US government-funded channel PBS, with its first run moving to the commercial HBO last year.. She's good at drawing, she jumps up and down when she's excited, and when Big Bird introduces himself, she ignores him. The fuzzy yellow fellow is confused. Doesn't she like him? But the other characters explain: Julia has autism. That means: "She does things just a little differently."

The iconic children's show has been thinking about introducing an autistic character for a few years. Its creators finally announced her arrival this week, and she will make her first appearance in April. Creating the character was "tricky" says the writer Christine Ferraro, because autism is "different for every single person". But they hope that Julia will help children to understand more about the condition.

Julia's puppeteer, Stacey Gordon, has an autistic son of her own. She says she wishes something similar had been around before he had started schoolIn 2011, research by the National Autism Society in Britain found that one in three children with autism say that the worst thing about school is being picked on., so that his friends "would have known that he plays in a different way, and that that's OK".

Autism is a lifelong condition that can affect how people see the world and interact with others. It is a spectrum, meaning that it affects people differently - but common features include struggling with communicationMost animals disguise their weakness, but humans display their vulnerability with highly visible tears. This may be related to our unusually long childhood and dependence on others, reminding other members of our group that we need to be looked after., relying on routines, and having highly focused interests.

In his book NeurotribesNeurotribes:The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversitypublished by Avery in 2015; won the Samuel Johnson Prize, awarded for English non-fiction., the writer Steve Silberman tracks the condition's history and argues that autistic people have played a large role in shaping society, particularly in areas like science and technology.

In fact, many "have grown up to become the architects of our future." he says.

This view is advocated by a movement known as "neurodiversity". Its advocates argue that autistic brains should not be seen as "wrong" - just different.

"Those differences carry with them gift and disability," explains John Elder Robison, an autistic writer. "Society needs the exceptional thinkers that the neurodiversity world produces."

Neurodiversity has been described as a new civil rights movement. Some autistic people are proud of their diagnosis and the unusual ways that they see the world; they argue that rather than thinking of autism as "not normal", society should respect all different types of brains. Silberman compares this to a computer: just because it "is not running Windows does not mean it's broken".

But others are more cautious. Neurodiversity asks people to stop thinking of autism in medical terms. But some fear that this glosses over the fact that autism can make life very hard for people and their loved ones. It is not all maths geniuses, after all. Often day-to-day living can be impossible without constant care. For those families, medical research into causes and cures is a vital source of hope.