John Slegers
John Valentin Pieter Hubert Slegers (born December 28, 1981) is a web developer living in Leuven, Belgium. He is best known for developing the free and open source web framework Cascade Framework and as an activist in the Autism rights movement.
Career
Slegers obtained a Bachelor of Computer Science in 2006. He worked as an SAP consultant for a few years, but reoriented his career towards web development in 2010. He's currently working for a communication agency named INXCO as a full stack web developer.
Cascade Framework
Slegers authored Cascade Framework in 2013 Cascade Framework is written in pure CSS. It supports responsive design and all modern browsers as well as IE6+. Because of its support of IE6, it is most popular in China and Japan. The most popular website using Cascade Framework today is Japanese website .
Cascade Framework is open source and available on GitHub. Developers are encouraged to participate in the project and make their own contributions to the platform.
As of October 29, 2014, Cascade Framework Advanced has been released. This Open Source project integrates Cascade Framework with JQuery UI. As of May 19, 2014, a Cascade Framework based Drupal theme is also in development.
Asperger syndrome
He knew he was somehow "different" from his peers at a very early age and suspected he had Asperger syndrome (with savant abilities) for several years. Nevertheless, he struggled finding a psychologist qualified enough to see through the many coping mechanisms he had developed since early childhood. In 2013, he met Wilfried Peeters (psychologist at the Expertisecentrum autismespectrum stoornissen UZ Leuven ) who recognized The Symptoms of Asperger syndrome very clearly and diagnosed him with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It was not explicitly specified as Asperger's, since it is no longer recognized as a distinct condition following the publication of the DSM-5 on May 18, 2013.
Personal life
Slegers grew up a in a small municipality named Bilzen. He moved to Leuven in his twenties. Besides programming, his interests include photography, neuropsychology and sociology. He's also an avid collector of antiquarian books and DVDs.
Slegers has been involved in a romantic relationship with De Groote since 2009. They have been living together as a couple since 2012. De Groote was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy as a child. In spite of having been wheelchair bound since her early teens, she obtained a doctorate in the field of Bioscience Engineering and currently teaches lab sessions at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. As a couple, they want to show the world that both people with a neurodevelopmental disorder and people with a neuromuscular Disorder can be productive members of society, living successful and happy lives.
Mensa membership
In 2008, Slegers had a WAIS-III IQ test taken, administered by a psychologist at the UPC KULeuven. He obtained a score of 137, which amounts to a score in the 99th percentile and a classification of Very Superior. Subscores ranged from 124 on the Verbal Comprehension Index (95th percentile) to 142 on performance IQ (100th percentile).
Out of curiosity, Slegers joined Mensa Belgium in June 2008. He didn't renew his membership for 2009 as he wasn't convinced of any advantages membership of Mensa could offer. With the derecognition of Mensa Belgium in 2011, he became a member of Mensa Mensa International along with all other current and former members of Mensa Belgium. He also did not renew this membership. He did, however, remain an ACTIVE member on the official Mensa International LinkedIn community for quite a while.
Autism activism
To educate people AbOUT what it means to have ASD, Slegers is active online (mostly on private forums) as an activist in the Autism rights movement.
Together with his girlfriend, Slegers frequently speaks at events organized by the Vlaamse Vereniging Autisme (VVA) on ASD and related topics and will soon be hosting local "Partners in Autism" sessions, also organised by the VVA. The VVA is a Flemish Nonprofit organization supporting people with ASD and their families. "Partners in Autism" sessions act as discussion groups where people with ASD and their partners share their experience.
Slegers and De Groote were also speakers at the National Autism Congress, organised in 2014 by Participate! in Brussels and plan to co-author a book in the future to be able to share their experiences and viewpoints with a broader audience.
See also
- Cascade Framework
- Autism rights movement
- Autistic culture
- Neurodiversity
- Donna Williams
- Michelle Dawson
- Temple Grandin