The phrase 'person with autism' probably counts as a pet peeve of mine.

I have a question for you, then, what about instances where when talking about someone, noting the fact that they're autistic, is important. For example, I work for a news station, and an autistic kid goes missing, and the police issue a media alert, the fact that he is autistic is pretty important to the overall story. Is the preferred method, then, phrasing it as I have "autistic kid" or is there another method that would be better? Granted, I have really no say over how scripts are written, but I can go to the news people and say "you know, I've talked to people who are slightly offended by us using this terminology."

Why write this now? Because I am poking around a charity to see if it is something I might want to support and their website is littered with the phrase. It grates on me every time I read it.

That's what you get when you have marketing people design a website. They're more concerned with furthering themselves than actually being sensitive to and helping others. They're just as bad as sales people, trust me.

One site even renamed it 'Asperger's disorder' from 'Asperger's syndrome'. Really, you're going to do that?

Isn't Asperger's Syndrome the actual medical name, though?