The Autism Exchange (AEX) is designed to put autism related information at your fingertips. The AEX runs on a very unique software system that is easy to navigate and contains thousands of data streams which are organized, standardized, and synchronized across topics and categories. This is all designed to save caregivers time and money. There are four main menus at the top of the Home page: Member Savings, Organized Information, Interactive Tools and About Us. Each is discussed below:
Organized Information
This area contains information on six major topics:
- Biomedical
- Diet
- Daily Living
- Education
- Therapies
- Parent Info
Further, each of these topics are broken into categories. For example, Diet contains: Gluten Free Casein Free, Specific Carbohydrate Diet, Low Oxalate Diet, Body Ecology Diet, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, and Feingold Diet. All of these categories were developed after asking hundreds of autism caregivers and practitioners what information was most important to them. As new information comes available, the categories will be updated and may even change over time based on user interest.
When a category is selected (like Diet/GFCF), a resource page of helpful information pertaining to that category is displayed including: an introductory paragraph, related websites, books, tools, and forums/blogs. All categories throughout The AEX contain these same sections which keeps the information organized. In addition, website links are randomly rotated throughout the site in order to allow a variety of information to be viewed. It also means users do not have to search all over the internet to find information on a given category. At The AEX, we continuously look for ways to save autism caregivers time, because we know it is a very precious commodity.
Interactive Tools
The AEX also contains many interactive tools to help parents, professionals, and other users find information in an organized and quick manner. These interactive tools can be found on the Interactive Tools menu at the top of all web pages and on the navigation bar on the left of all resource pages (like Diet/GFCF):
- The Exchange Box allows users to share (exchange) information with our site. Users can upload information to several areas of The AEX. The Exchange Box is simple to use and once information is uploaded, our researchers review it and if appropriate for The AEX, it will be uploaded and shred with all caregivers.
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The Directory contains several easy-to-use sub-directories such as: practitioner links, lab test companies, compounding pharmacies, and autism blogs.
- The Consumer Corner allows users to search for product and service companies related to each of The AEX six major topics of the site.
- The Community Library contains files from autism doctors, researchers, educators, and parents. It is interactive and allows users to search by each of The AEX six major topics of the site.
- The Search feature allows users to make quick, interactive searches of the entire site for any category of information. This feature is located at the top right corner of every page and is very user friendly.
- The Survey Says feature allows users to take Quick Polls about what matters to them, see What's Trending on The AEX (coming soon), and vote for the best sites on The AEX (coming soon).
- The Newsletter is free to all users and provides information on topic areas of The AEX, links to new research, videos, books, and more.
- The Contact Us tool allows users to provide feedback to The AEX. We welcome your feedback because we want to make our site better. The Contact Us feature is available at the bottom of every page.
The AEX provides uniquely organized and free information to save autism caregivers time.