A mother of a 17 year old autistic kid once told me, her son is like a computer. You ask him a question, and his brain will start processing on the input question, and match it with the first answer that it had probably recorded with a similar query. The reply therefore may not be what we expect, but what his brain has processed.
Sometimes she felt like, learning his first language for him was like learning a new language for us, the only difference in his case was that he was not able to translate like we did when we learnt a new language (the translation process that goes in our minds involuntarily, translating the new language from our native language and then vocalising our language in the new language and vice-versa). So for him it was like learning a new language for us without knowing any other language!
The crux therefore in engaging autistic people in gainful employment is to understand and figure out how their brain works, and how reactions and spontaneous behaviour an be utilised to the best of their ability.
I am still in search of inputs from autistic adults who can express themselves in written language to help us understand them better.
Here is a link I found, that does give some inputs :
http://iautistic.com/
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