For decades, a jigsaw puzzle piece has been used to symbolise autism across the world. It has been used for charity logos and awareness ribbons, and even tattooed on to the bodies of well-meaning parents.
But for many autistic adults, the puzzle piece isn’t just outdated – it’s offensive. Some consider it a hate symbol: a reminder of how autistic people have long been misunderstood, pathologised and excluded from conversations about their own lives.
The puzzle piece first appeared in 1963, when the UK’s National Autistic Society adopted a logo designed by a non-autistic parent of an autistic child. It featured not just a puzzle piece but the image of a crying child, meant to depict autism as a puzzling condition that caused suffering.
