Josef Koudelka is a Czech-French photographer. He is a member of Magnum Photos and has won awards such as the Prix Nadar (1978), a Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1989), a Grand Prix Henri Cartier-Bresson (1991), and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (1992). Exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography, New York; the Hayward Gallery, London; the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
Johann Friedrich Karl Asperger was an Austrian physician. Noted for his early studies on atypical neurology, specifically in children, he is the namesake of the former autism spectrum disorder Asperger syndrome. He wrote more than 300 publications on psychological disorders that posthumously acquired international renown in the 1980s. His diagnosis of autism, which he termed "autistic psychopathy," garnered controversy. Further controversy arose in the late 2010s over allegations that Asperger referred children to the Am Spiegelgrund children's clinic in Vienna during the Nazi period. The clinic was responsible for murdering hundreds of disabled children, although the extent of Asperger's knowledge of this fact and his intentions in referring patients to the clinic remains unknown.
Bruno Daniel Marie Paul Retailleau is a French politician who has presided over The Republicans group in the Senate since 2014. He has represented the Vendée department in the Senate since 2004. Retailleau also served as President of the General Council of Vendée from 2010 to 2015 and President of the Regional Council of Pays de la Loire from 2015 until 2017.
Michal Hašek is a Czech politician and former Governor of the South Moravian Region. From 2002 until 2014, he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies (MP). He also served as shadow Minister of Agriculture in the shadow cabinet of former Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek.
The Czech Pirate Party often known simply as the Pirates is a liberal progressive political party in the Czech Republic, founded in 2009. The party was founded as a student-driven grassroots movement campaigning for political transparency, civil rights and direct democracy.
Vladimír Dlouhý is a Czech economist and politician.
Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) is one of the largest universities in the Czech Republic with 8 faculties, and is one of the oldest institutes of technology in Central Europe. It is also the oldest non-military technical university in Europe.
Bohuslav Sobotka is a Czech politician and lawyer who served as the prime minister of the Czech Republic from January 2014 to December 2017 and Leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) from 2010 until his resignation in June 2017. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies (MP) from 1996 to 2018. Sobotka also served as minister of Finance from 2002 to 2006.
Martin Stropnický is a Czech politician and diplomat who served as the minister of Foreign Affairs from December 2017 to June 2018, and was previously minister of Defence from 2014 to 2017. From 2 January 1998 to 22 July 1998 he also served as the minister of Culture. Before entering politics, he was an actor, songwriter, author and director.
Marian Jurečka is a Czech politician, who has served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour and Social Affairs since 17 December 2021 and Minister of the Environment from November 2022 to March 2023, both in Petr Fiala's Cabinet. He was previously the Minister of Agriculture in Bohuslav Sobotka's Cabinet from 2014 to 2017.
Michel Bussi is a French author, known for writing thriller novels, and a political analyst and Professor of Geography at the University of Rouen, where he leads a Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishment in the French National Centre for Scientific Research, where he is a specialist in electoral geography.
Philippe Saunier is a French art historian who is chief curator at the Bureau de l'inventaire des collections et de la circulation des biens culturels at ministry of culture. He was formerly with the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée Picasso in Paris. He is the author with Thea Burns of L'art du pastel (2014) which was translated into English and published by Abbeville Press in 2015 as The art of the pastel.
Everette Taylor is an American business executive. He has been the CEO of Kickstarter since September 2022, and was CMO of Artsy, and founder of ET Enterprises which includes the marketing firm MiliSense, social media software company PopSocial, ArtX and GrowthHackers.
Tomáš Petříček is a Czech politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from October 2018 to April 2021. He served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs between August and October 2018, then Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Affairs from May until December 2017.
Approximately 12 million French citizens are affected by disability. The history of disability activism in France dates back to the French Revolution when the national obligation to help disabled citizens was recognized, but it was "unclear whether or not such assistance should be public or private." Disabled civilians began to form the first associations to demand equal rights and integration in the workforce after the First World War. Between 1940 and 1945, 45,000 people with intellectual disabilities died from neglect in French psychiatric asylums. After the Second World War, parents of disabled children and charities created specialized institutions for disabled children for whom school was not accessible. In 2018, the French Government began to roll out a disability policy which aimed to increase the allowance for disabled adults to €900 per month, improve the digital accessibility of public services, and develop easy-to-read and understand language among other goals.
Julie Dachez is a French social psychologist, lecturer and autism rights activist. She's the author of Invisible Differences and Dans ta bulle!. In 2016, she became the first openly autistic person to defend a thesis on the subject in France.
Jérôme Segal is a French-Austrian essayist and historian, lecturer at Sorbonne University and a researcher and journalist in Vienna. He is also known for his contributions in the field of animal law. He is the author of several articles and books, in particular on Jewishness and animal advocacy.
Olivier Guez is a French journalist, essayist and writer. He won the 2017 Prix Renaudot for his novel The Disappearance of Josef Mengele.
The history of autism in France is marked by the strong influence of psychoanalysis, and by the persistence of institutionalization practices that violate the fundamental rights of autistic people. According to estimates at the end of 2016, 0.7 to 1% of the French population has an autism spectrum disorder, most of which is undiagnosed, leading to varying degrees of disability.
The employment of people with autism is a social issue that is being addressed more and more frequently. These people suffer one of the lowest employment rates among workers with disabilities, with between 76% and 90% of them being unemployed in Europe in 2014 and ca. 85% in the USA in 2023. Similarly, in the United Kingdom 78% of autistic adults are unemployed. This is depite the fact, that "approximately 50% of people with autism spectrum disorder have an IQ in the average to high range and do not have any additional physical needs."
