April will be observed as Autism Awareness Month and in its wake; the advocacy group Autism Speaks announces the release of its first online community survey on livability for people with autism.

To conduct this study, the group gathered the data from different places to generate a list of places to live for people with autism and they aimed to find out places which are most often cited by the respondents for best availability of services and resources, educational offerings and recreational and medical services.

The study suggests that New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston, Northern New Jersey, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Seattle and Milwaukee were found to be the top 10 places to live for people with autism whereas Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Florida, Michigan and California were reported to be the worst ones.

The researchers included around 848 members of the autism community from different states and they found that 74% members were satisfied with the availability of services for autism while 26% were found unhappy about the same.

Other findings of the study suggest that around three-quarter of respondents were not satisfied with the medical care they were receiving and 90% of them denied having an access to any kind of respite services.