An autistic adult in Vienna. Eleven years on record.

This is my story. I have been struggling since childhood. I am autistic, though I only got the word for it as an adult. Long before the diagnosis, the mismatch was already there: environments built for a way of processing the world that is not mine, and the daily work of passing as fine so the cost stayed invisible.

My name is Mohamad Sakkal. I am 31, Syrian, autistic, and I have been in Austria since 2015. This is where the consequences became impossible to absorb.

I came as a refugee. I learned German. I studied computer science for five years at a public Austrian university. The curriculum offered no adjustments for autistic processing. Misunderstandings in exam questions were graded as student errors. Rule changes were not communicated. I had to stop.

I have applied to over 542 jobs in eight years. I speak German, English, and Arabic. I taught myself to code. Interviews reach the test or final round. Then nothing: no email, no explanation.

Without income, my residency was refused. In the same Bescheid where the authority acknowledged my limitations, they wrote: if you can study, why can't you work?

I tried to have my disability formally recognized. A neurologist who specializes in epilepsy and Parkinson's assessed me for 25 minutes, noted that I speak German well, and overruled the written report from the hospital that has treated me for ten years. The hospital's report says all treatment options are exhausted. Three rejections, including at court level.

The record is not only refusals. My insurance covers my medication. A public hospital has treated me for ten years. The care allowance is real support, granted without a fight. That is the contradiction: two offices read the same file and reached opposite conclusions.

I contacted anti-racism organizations, disability rights organizations, city departments, charities, ombuds offices, advocacy organizations, and media outlets. Each confirmed the case fell outside its mandate and referred onward. There are organizations for many situations here. None had a mandate that covered mine.

In 2026, after eleven years of no institutional engagement, three responses arrived:

• A university research group named the case as something no Austrian organization works on and for which no scientific literature exists.
• A human rights research institute acknowledged the assessment practice as arbitrary and well-known.
• A state ombuds office opened a specific procedural opening under the Behindertengleichstellungsgesetz.

These are the first documented institutional acknowledgments of the case. None of them changes the underlying decisions.

Across the same eleven years, I have continued to ship technical work as an independent developer. Scriptum is a Markdown reader on the App Store, for iOS and macOS. Cortex is in development. The work exists in parallel with the institutional record. Under Austrian rules, it does not count toward residency, disability recognition, or any of the categories the bodies named above decide.

Status as of June 2026. Four formal refusals (residency once, disability three times); an appeal against the latest refusal is pending at the Federal Administrative Court. 542 unanswered job applications. Three institutional acknowledgments in 2026. No change yet to the underlying decisions.