They also have a history of supporting dangerous and unscientific prevention/"treatments" for autism, including promoting anti-vaccine nonsense (http://autisticadvocacy.org/2014/01/2013-joint-letter-to-the...).
We have a 2 1/2 year old girl who has a significant delay in communication, everything else she pretty much excels at. We started speech therapy and she is definitely improving. We've asked the therapists about autism since we read quite a bit of scary stuff on Autism Speaks site. The therapists both stated that while she may have an issue that can be associated with the spectrum, they do not recommend labeling her as autistic. They did mention that some parents prefer the autistic label because that will open up more resources for them with local school districts which in a way, inflates the autism numbers.