This TED Talk features autism advocate Stuart Duncan, recorded live at TEDx York You 2017.

My name is Stuart Duncan, but I'm actually probably better known online as autism father.

That's me on the internet. I know the resemblance is uncanny.

But I'm going to talk a little bit today about Minecraft.

That's my Minecraft character.

But if you don't know the game very well, don't worry too much about it.

It's just the medium that I used at the time to fill a need.

And what I want to talk about applies to pretty much every situation.

So about four years ago, I started a Minecraft server for children with autism and their families,

and I called it Oktraft.

And since then, we've been in the news all around the world on television and radio and magazines.

BuzzFeed called us one of the best places on the Internet.

We're also the subject of an award-winning research paper called Appropriating Minecraft as an assistive technology for youth with autism.

It's a bit of a mouthful.

But you get the idea, I think.

So I want to talk a little bit about that research paper

and what it's about.

But first, I have to give you a little bit of

history on how the server came to be. Back in 2013, everybody was playing Minecraft, kids and

adults alike, with and without autism, of course. But it was the big thing. But I saw parents

on social media reaching out to other parents asking if their autistic children

could play together.

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