You pose a very interesting question indeed! I have read a couple books written by people with autism to try and understand how my son may view things. As each person's experience is personal and can be different, I sample a little bit of everything and look for a pattern.

BTDT? What is that?
I agree that we need to develop the skills you describe. My concern is that most of the professionals and NT parents lack the knowledge about how to effectively communicate with the autistics, and have not historically taken advantage of the insights autistics can provide. All autistics need to learn to communicate and behave in ways that function appropriately in our society, but as long as NTs lack the ability to understand, communicate with and empathize with autistics, the progress will be limited. For almost 50 years it has been primarily a unidirectional effort. And because of the lack of understanding and communication skills NTs have traditionally had with autistics, it has been a frustrating and painful one at best. I don't believe NTs can accurately interpret an autistic's behavior or skills without some consideration of the autistic perspective.

While I do believe there is much to be gained by hearing an "insider's view" of autism, as a parent my primary concern is helping my child function as successfully as she can in a society that is made up primarily of NT's. I'm not trying to stuff a square peg in a round hole, but she will need to learn the skills that will allow her to live independently as an adult, hold down a job, maintain friendships and hopefully one day a marriage/life partnership, and so on. I'm most interested in advice from professionals and BTDT parents on how to achieve that.

If we focus less on behavior and more on reasons for the behavior I think there is a greater amount of common ground between autistics, do you agree? And while most autistics learn to communicate by adulthood, we are rarely ever good at knowing what "channels to follow" in order to disseminate whatever information we may have to provide. If we can somehow attain NT and autistic coordination of information dissemination, I believe we can succeed at least better than we do currently.

Does anyone agree?

BTDT = "Been There, Done That" e.g. veterans of whatever is being discussed.