6. Embracing Neurodiversity in Tech / Jonathan Fielding / ffconf 2023

[Music] thank you very much Remy and he downplayed it I've I've sent a lot of cfps this conference um and this is a conference I've been attending since back in 2014 and one thing I love about this conference is that there's so many talks that I can go look look back on right I can go back and look at talks and share them with Junior Engineers say look at this talk it's going to be one that's going to change how you think about things right but it to be true about this talk I want this talk to be a talk that we fix all the problems I'm going to talk about so that we don't have to have this talk in the future so I want to start this talk by saying every neurod Divergent individual is different and I'm going to share my personal journey and and this is the first time I've talked about this so I'm very nervous um but um I think it's really important to tell my story so I can give context for the rest of the talk that's that said I also need to point out that uh because everyone is is different my lived experience is on my own so I'm going to share talk about General symptoms and and and and of the conditions people so you so you you're aware of them so we're going to start in the north of England so I grew up in the north of England and throughout my schooling there was always ways which I was I struggled but I was but just never seen being out of the ordinary where I was struggling with my writing the teachers suggested that I should try a different pen where I struggled with paying attention U it was made into a joke that oh Jonathan looked out the window and distracted the entire class by pointing to an airplane and where I struggled with social situations my parents pushed me into things like Scouts that forced me to new me meet new people and it all came to a head in college when one of the other students noticed how disorganized I was and suggested that the special education needs Department might be able to help I of course was apprehensive and probably very dismissive but however she insisted I spoke to someone that about what I was struggling with and the the the person per Department I spoke to explained both dyslexia and dyspraxia and that from the experience that I shared with her that it might be worth me getting assessed I then met with an educational psychologist who asked me lots of questions they went through things like my my reading speed my reading comprehension uh my writing speed and the the readability of my handwriting with the aim to understand what I struggled with then I went away and wrote up a report detailing my dyslexia and and just practic assessment which offered up ways in which my college could support me I got access to things like extra time and exam exams using a computer for my exams so that my tech my written text not being readable didn't didn't hurt my my scores and it resulted me in actually finishing exams for once because I had the time to actually read and comp comprehend the questions I sub went on to University where I studied internet Computing which at the time was actually a very Niche subject was offered by a few universities and I was able to continue to take advantage of that enhanced support I then went went on to graduate in 2008 and after a couple of short roles I I I was able to set into a role and markting an agency called crayon and as I started I I started to get more established in my career I also started to get more involved in the Tech Community I went to my first uh Tech conference which was the first J jQuery conference was host hosted in Oxford but from my perspective though I found it awkward to attend these events internally I struggled with meeting new people when I attended meetups for example I would often find myself feeling awkward and alone I but keep I kept sending these meetups because I I felt that I was learning so much about different Technologies and I knew this would be good for me and my career and I eventually started started to make friends so I was able to talk to others when attending attending events and there's actually quite a few of these people here today and that's why I felt s safe safe to talk about this subject I then took the next step and started speaking at meetups and and subsequently con conferences much like this one this was in fact easier because people instead of having to strike up conversations myself they would come to me they' be asking me questions and then I don't have to start the conversations and I feel that's awkward and as I continued my career I worked I started working at a few different startups and I I was pushing myself outside my com comfort zone all the time going to meetups talking at them and talking at conferences however I switched into as I switched into more senior roles I I I got started to really struggle with imposter syndrome as was talked about earlier and after a very bad um anxiety spiral during the covid pandemic I started to learn about what autism was and it's and ironically I started hyper fixating on it re reading a lot about it and taking all the online quizzes I go find and and a after talking with my wife she encouraged me just get yourself assessed and being a software engineer I'm in the very privileged position I could afford to pay for a private assessment many people unfortunately can't and and 8 weeks later I found out I was autistic and this was eye opening for me and since then I've learned so much about myself because I'm able to see what the symptoms are and oh that's that's how it is for me or and how and then when am I able to talk to people about it like oh yeah that's why I do this and then um actually a a year ago I found myself looking for a new role with the first time with this information and that's really interesting because you get asked questions like do you need any accommodations through interviews and I was like I don't know I've never done this before um uh and then um I I but it ruled out some companies for me because I was like no I don't feel that they would support me um and then in in January I joined spendesk so around the time I got my autism diagnosis I also learned the term neurodiversity and now let's I want to share that all with you so I've shared my personal Journey and that's brought me what to speak speaking here today um I I want to talk about this different kind of neurodiversity and the conditions themselves and before I jump into section I want to caveat it very strongly by saying that I'm not a psychologist and while I have tried to be as accurate as possible that this is based on personal research and where I talk about symptoms I've taken these directly from the NHS website just to ensure this to preserve accuracy so when I first first started researching this topic the first time I uh started talking about it which was at work was I found this blog post on the Harvard Harvard website and it describes it so well I wanted to share share it with you as well neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact the world around them in many different ways there is no one right way to think learn or behave and differences are viewed as deficits and when people's brains work differently from the norm they are refer ref to as neuro Divergent this means that where people have strengths and struggles that this means people have different strengths and struggles from people whose brains develop or work more typically the the possible differences include medical disorders learning disabilities and and other conditions and possible strengths can be a better memory the ability to solve complex mathematical calculations in the head and even be able to think about problems in many different ways unfortunately neurodiverse conditions have consistently underdiagnosed and due to the lack of due to both lack of awareness and insufficient resources for things like the NHS in particular a shortage of child psychologist right now means that there's waiting list of up to five years in the UK at the moment for children and this means that it's incredibly difficult to estimate the number of n virgent people we have in the UK and the common estimate that that I can find online is one in seven but it's impossible to truly know and due to this underdiagnosis in children we then have a large number of people as in adults seeing these things in themselves and then going for diagnosis themselves which means also the Adult Services are now under heav heavy pressure with many people getting turned away because only people who it's negatively impacting are actually being prioritized and um an it's important to to to point out the neurodiversity is a spectrum however I've spoken to a lot of people about this they often think this is what I mean that a spectrum is neurotypical on one end and neurod Divergent on the other and that is not the case when we talk about the neurodiversity Spectrum what we actually mean is a series of traits a person have more or less of this means like a person's fingerprints a person's traits is completely unique to them and it's re important to make this distinction as it TR truly shows how diverse neurodiversity is and highlights that the support that eneral needs can be significant can vary significantly from person to person and while and while these traits vary from person to person often you won't be able to see these traits you set because they and how they affect them because they become so good at hiding them this is referred to as masking it's an unconscious strategy that all humans develop when growing up in order to connect and with those around us however for neurod Divergent folk it can be it it they have a lot of lot more pressure to hide their true selves and spend their entire lives hiding their traits and trying to fit in this in itself can be harmful to their own well-being and can and can result in people being D not being diagnosed to later in life because they've been so good at hid hiding their condition so many of you might be thinking what conditions are are neurod diversities so now we're going to have a look at five different conditions for each of the neurod diversities I'm going to talk about I will talk about the condition itself and then I'm going to dispel some of the negative stereotypes sorry U typically so highlighting said the strengths that they can bring to the workplace so I'm going to go through the in alphabetical order and uh what I'm going to be talking about ADH ADHD autism dyslexia D dyspraxia and discal there is all there is a there's many more conditions however I didn't have time to speak to them today I don't think would like me to take take the entire conference a lot of these symptoms can things can coexist as well so for example I have a autism dyslexia and dyspraxia assessment and uh there many people have multiple of these assessments so let's start with ADHD so ADHD is short for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder which is diagnosed to people who struggle with in attention hyperactive and impulsivity and and those the symptoms that that come with ADHD are categorized in two categories the first of which is inattentiveness which is categorized as being someone with having a short attention span and being easily distracted making careless mistakes appearing forgetful or losing things being unable to stick to tasks that are tedious or timec consuming appearing to be unable to listen or car out instructions or having difficulty organizing tasks and then there is the other category which actually I think ADHD is probably more known for which is hyperactivity and impulsiveness which can be constantly fidgeting being unable to concentrate on t tasks excessive talking and Interruption s of conversations be unable to wait their turn acting without thinking and little or no sense of danger so we've now we've T taken the time to understand the symptoms let's look at some of the stereotypes and the first stereotype that you that you you often hear is that people with ADHD will be are hyperactive running all over the place when in reality for a lot of people with adg it's an internalized hyper agressivity which is like a very busy noisy mind another stereotype is ADHD is people they're always interrupting conversations but the reality is they struggle with the social cues of trying of when they're allowed to talk and even they might be worried that they're going to forget what they're going to say uh so so they need to actually um say it I know even when I've been talking at conferences I've been ask questions I've forgotten the question before I finish the answer so I I it really I know that can be really frustrating for people and unable to concentrate on tasks the next um when the reality is that they they're actually thinking about five to six different things simultaneously and they're struggling with the prioritization and the final terrorist stereotype I want to talk about is being forgetful where in reality they're often self-aware that they have issues with short-term memory so they're doing everything they can making notes and reminders to try and remember things and um so what I want to do in this next section was start to reframe how we think about those those those symptoms because when you look on the NS website they can come across quite negative so one of them is short attention span how however this can be reframed as being able to rap rapidly change the focus to new tasks which can be good in an environment where you're rapidly context switching we can also reframe acting without thinking be able to respond quickly in a crisis as imagine imagine when you have an incident someone who can respond quickly in a crisis is going to be able to help get get that fixed quicker and finally we can reframe their impulsiveness as Having the courage to try new things mean meaning if if there's a a problem that that the team is H ring they might think of a solution that that no one else would be willing to try having spoken about the challenges that come with the symptoms I want to talk about some of the strength because there's many strengths as well so PE people with ADHD are often more creative which in development role could be uh mean that they come up with creative and outof thebox ideas to solve problems they tasked with a state of hyper Focus which is common for people with hhd can allow them to zoom in on one particular task and achieve a lot in this a small amount of time and people with ADHD are often more risk tolerant mean they're they're willing to try the try those solutions that those might not be willing to try so if so if some someone in your team is is open enough that they feel they can tell you that they have ADHD how can you support them so the first is to make sure you sure you're using short-term goals so you work as a team work as a team to to break things into smaller deliverables that can be achieved in a small amount of time the second is to support them in their time management by confirming what task when tasks need to be done by highlighting important parts using calendars and even standups as a way to track deadlines and you can you can you can Al you can also help them by helping them get started some some sometimes they might be struggling with starting a new piece of work uh so you can support them by maybe doing a spike with them into what the possible solution could be and then you could build the the the then they can go away and build the final solution the next one to talk want to talk about is autism so autism is a diagnosis uh given to people who might have challenges with communication interacting with other people understanding how people think or feel finding things bright lights or loud noises overwhelming stressful uncomfortable getting anxious or upset about unfilm situations and social events taking longer to understand information and doing or thinking the same thing over and over and the and and those symptoms are broadly categorized in three categories of communication and interaction with others interest and behaviors and work and life impact functions so again we're going to look at stereotypes for the ver of reality I think autism has quite a few that have been perpetuated by the media so the first one on to touch on is people with Autism wanting to be things to be done their way where in reality is is often to struggle with situations outside what they're prepared for so it's say you move a meeting an hour hour earlier they're no now not going to be as prepared as they would otherwise would have been another stot type autastic people are sance or possess exceptional talents and this is particularly played out in the media how in reality people with with autism have a wide variety of skills just like people who are neurotypical and there is also the stereotype that autistic people prefer to be alone but the the reality is that they struggle with interpreting social cues and situations which leads them to isolate themselves and lastly it's common for people to think autistic people lack empathy or emot however the reality is that they strugg they might struggle with expressing and processing emotions but doesn't mean they lack them at all so let's uh have a go at reframing uh the symptoms about autism so let's start with autistic people have a repetitive nature this can be reframed as analytical being able to spot patterns and this can be valuable when you're trying to analyze a technical problem or some or some data next week we can refra autistic people coming across blun to rude as simply being having a more direct form of communication often rooted in black and white thinking mindset and lastly autistic people might come across as un interested UND opinions however we can reframe that as not understanding the social cues that their ideas have been understood by their peers so feeling that they have to reiterate upon them and if when we dive into the strengths that associated with autism we can see there are many strengths that they bring to the workplace for example a a strength in Lo logical thinking and and sorry for a stren for example a strength in logical and methodological think thinking can help someone with autism to solve complex problems a strong attention to detail can be can help with spotting errors and mistakes meaning they're actually can be really good when to send your PO requests to them because they're going to be able to SP spots the silly mistakes we make and passionate about their interests so passionate for interest mean the likely to find a role that aligns with their interests and and a passion for building the best product for their users right I mean my P my my passion is coding so I I was able to land right in through right industry and be and because they sales are are different and they can see themselves different they they're really good at accepting differences in others which reminds they're going to be the kind of people who are going to be P pushing for things like access accessibility on your team to help someone with autism get the most out their strengths there is a number of ways in that you can support them the first is having a clear and consistent schedule and providing additional support when the schedule becomes disrupted as I touched on earlier changing a meeting time at last minute can be disruptive to them so avoid that where possible and with the return to office since covid many companies are keeping smaller offices with hot desking is more common uh for someone with autism this can make them feel uncomfortable as they like the consistency of knowing where they'll sit in in the office and and who will be around them and speaking of the office it's important that we're able to work in environment without sensory distractions so aideal quieter area of the office with less people uh walking past that that that could distract them and finally when sending them a meeting invite provide them with as much detail as possible so not so they're able to plan ahead don't send them a meeting that's a oneto one with your manager and make them feel little anxious okay the next one we going to talk about disc Calia and I I wanted to carry out this one this is the hardest one to research so disc calculator is a diagnosis given to people who may have challenges with performing mathematical equations retaining numerical information a lack of confidence with numbers poor time management and giving a following directions and the simp and and and for this to be classified as a learning disability is for people who are demonstrating that the mathematical difficulties are not caused by lack of educational opportunities and the degree of difficulties evidence be below the expectations for the individual's age so then when we start looking at stereotypes let's let let's start with the common conception that people with discala can't count when the reality is that people with discala are simply find counting and calculating more difficult so they might be slower but it doesn't mean they're unable another stereotype is that is that people who say they want disc calcul is just using it as an excuse for being bad at math when when real reality is that disl calcul is more common than people expect with an estimated 5 to 7% of the population struggling with it and lastly there's a stereotype that people discal lack intelligence how however the reality is that it's a neurological condition and it has no relation to to the their level intelligence and it just affects their ability to process numerical information so let's have a go at at reframing those symptom just disc calculator to slow to comprehend mathematical equations it's simply a different way of processing information and finding it difficult to give or follow follow directions we can reframe that is as as being better at working more closely with others to reach a solution together and this and let's look at strengths so the research has found that people with uh this calcul are usually more creative and have and have autistic flare then the second is that they they have Innovative problem solving uh which can help you your team solve more complex problems in uniquely simple ways and the final um strength I want to touch on is they typically have good written and verbal communication skills which in an engineering team is amazing because they were able to help you with your uh with improving your documentation and even presenting things in workshops and if you're talking about uh recommended support systems if you're if you're going to have a meeting make sure you supply all the figures in advance so they have time they can take their time to comp to comprehend the data right in advance so they can come prepared where you're comparing two pieces of data use visual representations those are just pie charts or bar charts so they can see the differences in sizes present only the essential data don't don't include all don't include data that is is not going to be talked about or in or importance to the meeting and another aspect I didn't touch on as much earlier was like make sure that like having alerting to help with timekeeping so making sure maybe using calendars or or tools that help with timeing dyslexia so dyslexia is a diagnosis given to a people who have challenges with reading and writing very slowly having poor and inconsistent spelling understanding information told verbally and having difficulty with information that's written down and planning an organization and this and to be categorized as a learning difficulty disability it it does occur over a wide range of intellectual difficult sorry occurs across a a range of intellectual abilities and affects their Reading Writing and information processing so D dyslexia I think is quite known about but there's but I think there is a lot of stereotypes that also associated with it so the the really common one is dyslexic people can't read when real when reality is they just find it more difficult to uh decode and comprehend written text and in my own personal experience or people I know it's POS it's possible that someone with dyslexia is the 95th percentile of ability to read the text they just then struggle with the comprehension and another stereotype is that people would disect you simply need to try harder when reality is is is completely unrelated the am effort is not related to their ability to read and there's also misconception that dyslexia is a visual problem when in fact a p person who sorry when in fact a person with dyslexia is no more or less likely to have a vision problem and to ensure that vision isn't an issue during the assessments they that before performing a a dyslexia assessment the person has to have a recent ey test and this this ensures that the problem isn't isn't isn't to do with your ey test it's to do with I forgot Tock the slide cool um and lastly The Stereotype that people dyslexia do not read enough however the re reality is that with a neurological condition exposure does not impact does not exposure does not impact their ability to read so uh let's do the reframing uh with with dyslexia so slow to read the same text as others we can reframe that simply processing written content differently we can reframe a difficulty in not taking as an ability is is is having is learning to adapt how they keep track of information and not using that as their primary way maybe they use audio recording so they record record that meeting rather than write write notes and if we look at strengths um there is a lot of research that shown that uh people people with dyslexia have good uh visual spatial reasoning which meaning that they think with mental images this means you're able to think multiple steps ahead identifying mistakes that they need to avoid when building out a solution perfect for engineering they they might also have strong imagination meaning they imagine new solutions to problems uh a lot more easier and and Beyond how Simply Having a strong imagination they're good at thinking outside the box and while they struggle with reading and writing areas that do not depend on this as much such as math and Computing um they find a lot easier and it can be a real strength to support someone on your team with with dyslexia the first thing you can do is find out what call Call they read best on what I mean by this is um it might be that they can read text easier on a green background so um and if if it's on a screen you could you can apply a green background or if it's uh a written piece of document you actually get a green film that you p over the top and then that makes it easier for them to read uh it's also good to support important Communications in more than one format so say you you you need to send out a all company email send a video and audio recording with it as well so that they're able to do that instead and if you have a big policy document you have to read like a security policy or gdpr highlight the key points so that they don't get missed and explore supportive technology options so screen readers can be really good if they're struggling with reading or using things like um gram family which helps you with uh your written communication I use that all the time uh and the final we going to talk about is is dyspraxia uh which is also KN known as Developmental Coordination Disorder and uh I'm going to refer to it as dyspraxia because the ones are mouthful but uh dis here is for people who have challenges with coordination balance movement learn new skills thinking and remember information writing typing drawing and grasping some objects managing emotions and time management planning and organizational skill and and those and the actual symptoms are categorized into two categories so when you look at the first one is movement so they might Str be clumsy they might Tire easily and difficulty with writing and physical activities and when it comes to the second one is coordination um bump into people or objects make a mess when eating and have trouble with time management and planning now we understand the symptom dis dis praxia in more detail I want us to look at the stereotypes like we did earlier so so starting with stereotype that dyspraxia are just clumsy the reality is that people with dyspraxia they even if they try their best to walk around things and be careful uh they end up buming things and tripping things thing I walk into all the time is door handles there is a stereotype that people with dyspraxia have low intelligence how the reality is that for the people that struggle struggle with their F motor skills and say picking things up off the floor it's not it's not because they have a lack of intelligence it's not related at all and there's a belief that people that disra you justce organized however the reality is that they can put all the effort into the world the world they'll try new organization strategy and it'll it'll still be they will still rest struggle and lastly The Stereotype that socially awkward that they are socially awkward is really difficult ulty in how they word and express themselves and makes more difficult to handle situation social situations so let's reframe um some of those symptoms around dyspraxia so the first of things is speak without thinking things through and this can and this can be reframed as speaking literally and factually about things we can also reframe how it might appear than listening as a preference we can reframe how they appear to not be listening as a preference to observe situations and make them mental notes so they might be re observant about what's happening in a meeting but they might they might not speak as up as much and the difficult and a difficulty to read their writing can be rior re reframed as like they're prioritized in just getting the information down they know they they might know that they they struggle with with the writing with the dis prioritized and getting it down so be beyond the symptom and stereotypes there's much there's also been Research into the strengths that can be this practice here and the first of which is creative thinking um which can really help us push our products forward they can excel at problem solving like some of the other um neurod diversities and and and quite often they're ve they're very sensitive to to the needs of others um so they they're really good Ally for pushing for improving uh inclusivity and um when it comes to recommend support systems we have uh provide making sure you provide clear and concise instructions tasks so if you use a tool like jira for tickets make sure that uh you provide enough detail uh up front uh breaking breaking tax down to the parts to avoid overwhelming so don't give them a massive project just to work with on their own support them in Breaking that down into smaller smaller pieces so that they can they don't feel overwhelmed by the project um if they need to pick up a new skill maybe the new Project's going to be rting in Rust because someone thinks that's a new trendy thing to do give them adequate time for learning those new skills and and make sure they they have ways to alert themselves from meetings um I actually use a tool called in yourf face which which takes over my entire screen and just like tells me you have a meeting cool so that was a lot of downloading of what neurodiversity is now let's jump to um in the workplace because I want to focus more on what it's like to work in Tech as an neur divent individual to help me with this what I've actually spent the past few months doing since Remy said he accepted the talk was asking um other individuals uh questions like interviewing them um just to get make sure that I cover things that they thought I should so the first thing I wanted to talk upon is uh making it clear that it's safe to share neur that people's neur diversities in your business so when someone joins a business or is late diagnosed uh with their diversity they will be unsure whether they share with their employer they will thinking where they need to let HR know where they need to let their their manager know or and even if they should tell their colleagues and there's definitely advantages and disadvantages of this of of telling these people for example if I tell if I let HR know that I have a disability it should mean that they are able to help with any accommodations I might need such as tools for to Aid writing an organization letting your manager know uh will help you help you to figure out the best best way for you to communicate and for them to ad adapt how they give you feedback and letting your colleagues know might also help you help them collaborate with you better because they're able to understand when you're you you might not be seeing things clearly so so so but the problem is that that it isn't a given that any of these people will support you in the way that you expect and unfortunately might even uh be seen as just causing problems so for me I need to feel feels psychologically safe in a workplace to be able to tell people about about these things and while I don't expect my manager to be immediately knowledgeable of my needs I want my manager who cares enough to want to learn and grow as a person as well he's also seeing this talk now so he should now be an expert so um we we also as as businesses we do a lot of training so gdpr anti-bribery health and safety and we should adap adapt to our trainings to take many forms so we shouldn't have it just in an onboarding manual or in a pre-recorded video we should give we should give them it in different in multiple of these formats so that they can learn it quite quickly and um we should Al and and and while it is this imp facts PS all employees we should make make make sure particularly that we talk to our neur Divergent colleagues to make sure that we are doing a good job with our training we should also adapt hiring and interview processes so um firstly by being more accommodating with how we re how we review CVS by focusing on skills rather than grammatical capabilities then in the interview process allowing the people to not turn on the camera on in video interviews on for Onsite interviews using quiet meeting rooms for Co for the co and and for for if it's a coding exercise give them the option to take it home or do it in the office because some people the pressure of doing it in front of someone or even just reping someone might be too high to get last perform their best or conversely having that person with them might might give them the actual drive to actually get the task done so that give them the choice and we should be ensuring that we we are using clear and concise communication they might struggle with sarcasm or jokes so ensure that you make it clear if you're being a sarcastic or making a joke as to what you miscommunication because I know I can be bad with understanding this I when I when I make a joke I put jokes in Brackets all the time uh and it can be help helpful to use closed rather than open questions to avoid ambiguity and make make sure there's no confusion and another thing I think is really important to assume best intention in communication and another so I I think like we're all colleagues I'm hoping we're all nice people nice to work with um so assume the best intent and sometimes they might come across a direct about something because it's something they feel is clearcut or they might be wanting to respond in a timely manner they might also try and push a certain idea of of their own over over others uh however this might just be Cas case of just being passionate rather than assuming the worse try to clarify the situation and give them feedback if they if you think they could handle that communication in a better way as they likely will appreciate it another way in which you can help your colleagues is be mindful of the is is their focus time while that this will help your colleagues your NE well this will help all your colleagues your neuro diversion colleagues in particular will rely on that Focus time to be able to just get the stuff done and ensure the adequate spacing between meetings uh so that people have time to St compress and running have time and I have a lot more content so I'm going to rush now um so um use language based on how the PE the the person refers themselves I think this one's really important so there's two really common ways in which people might be referred to in these examples I'm going to use autism but this could be interchange with the neurodiversity the first is to use person first language so to refer to someone as a person with autism this puts a person first and the diagnosis second the alternative is is identity first language where someone might be referred to as an autistic person the reason Some people prefer this is because they feel it's integral part of their identity and that's how I feel since finding out that I'm autistic I feel it's not something that I can change by myself it's part of who I am so I prefer the second and this one I T very quickly is prioritize the needs of the few rather than convenience than many if there's something that your team's going to do which is going to be um a problem for your neurod Divergent colleagues don't do it okay so so having focused on this talk on on how we can support our colleagues let let's talk about how we can be more inclusive and in in in in our Tech Community and yes that is a photo from this conference I'm in the middle uh I I so the first one thing we want to do is give people space um so while it might be tempting if you see someone alone to start a conversation introduce yourself as you don't want them to feel be feel left out be mindful that they might be taking a quiet moment for themselves but because we want to give people space we should also give them opportunities to join in group conversations and there's really nice way to do this I heard at another conference and this is by standing in a pack man formation so the idea is that by leaving a gap Gap people can join the conversation and then when we readjust the group so that so there there's always a gap meaning more people can join and this idea comes from a guy called Eric huler I'm probably saying that name wrong I'm sorry if you see this talk uh and uh he gave really good explanation of this leaving room for new people when standing in a group is a physical way to show an inclusive and welcoming environment it reduces the feeling of there being clicks and allows people to integrate themselves into the community and if and then uh it's really important and then if you're if you're the person that's organizing the event this one's for Remy uh so uh share as much information as you can as uh as possible in plain language and and this is really important and avoids people feel anxious about the event on the day and FF comp is actually really good at this uh and the other one is make sure we we establish feedback channels so um as event organizer give people an opportunity to give feedback and if there's something that you learn that's going to benefit other events share it blog about it like make make make all all our events better as industry out of time I am wrapping up so today I hope you all learned more about many of the different kind of neurodiversity and how we can Embrace their strengths and as I start to wrap up I want to reemphasize the point I made at the beginning every neurod Divergent person is going to be different and so are any support needs they have and through having empathy for our Nur Divergent colleagues and the areas in which they might need our help we can help them play to their strengths and this will ultimately lead towards having more inclusive teams I've I've also put a list of uh resources together on my website I didn't do a q code but there's my website and before I give the ma back to Remy I have one last thought to leave you with when we start to improve the way we organize our teams to be more accessible to those who are neurod Divergent we also improve them for everyone else and there is a term for this the curb cut effect coin for when we adapt our streets for those less physically abled we're able to improve them for everyone [Music] cool

2023-12-26 19:54

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