Petition of the week: dim headlights, turn off music!
Grocery shopping is not much fun. For some, it’s pure stress – for autistic people, for example. Yet stores could do a lot about it.

For autistic people, supermarkets mean sensory overload; shopping usually ends with screaming, hitting, running away and knocking things over Photo: dpa
Katja Cragle’s four-year-old son Emil likes to go shopping. He often asks her about it. But shopping with him is not so easy. She always has to put him off or come up with excuses. Emil was diagnosed with autism last fall. "Taking him shopping basically ends in disaster," Cragle says over the phone. "It only takes about a minute, and he’s yelling, crying, hitting, knocking things over." The problem is supermarket sensory overload, which overwhelms people with autism: bright lights, too loud, too many people, too much clutter.