Hello, how are you doing? My spouse Ming and I recently watched a zoom called Designing for every user – Neurodiversity in the workplace. That bright art glass pic is a screenshot of the scientist presenter’s website. I saw something about the free zoom on eventbright. Sounded great.
I don’t have a workplace or plan to design one any time soon. But I love neurodiversity, access, and disability justice. So the topic is my cup of tea.
The speaker talked about designing workplaces to accommodate blindness, color blindness, Deafness, highly sensitive persons, ADHD and autism, people who have dyslexia, and she also talked about personality types.
She talked about how certain occupations attract people with certain disabilities and personality types. So it’s important to account for the needs of those people.
what I liked
I liked learning about how to help a space work better for Deaf and blind people. It was delicious to think about things I’d never considered, like how to signal in a space that there’s a hazard, such as stairs. She mentioned that colors like red are often used to signal danger, but that won’t help colorblind people.
I was interested in what she said about natural light producing glare. She said people with autism can be very sensitive to glare. She talked about how people with dyslexia can be very sensitive to noises, like if the copy machine makes a weird noise every hour. The can make a dyslexic person very uncomfortable. Yes, I can relate.
I liked her explanation of how different people with the same diagnoses can have sensitivities for different things. I’m freaked out by noise worst of all, but also light, visual overstimulation, faces, smells, tactile, temperature. But any autistic person can have more or less sensitivity to different senses.
I like that the scientist mentioned olfactory sensitivity. The sense of smell seems often ignored. Strong smells are extremely distracting to me, both good and bad.
I liked when the presenter mentioned how almost every disability is on a spectrum. That’s great to remind people, since many people think in binaries. For example, many people think blind people see absolutely nothing, when there is actually a range of what blind people might be able to see.
what I didn’t like
Everything was couched in terms of productivity and making money. Makes sense considering the talk was for workplaces. But I wish the motivation was deep respect. I wish no place was exempt from treating people as the inherently worthy, sacred beings that we are. Even workplaces.
Many things she put in terms of better and worse. There were assumptions about disability that I don’t agree with and consider harmful to the world. All bodies are valid bodies. Even her “Actually, science shows that people with ADHD are more creative than the rest of us” bothered me. The reason that’s remarkable to say is that the assumption would be ADHD is just a problem and therefore bad.
In fact, disabilities are potentially ok, and disabled people are normal variations on people. I would never assume that ADHD or any disability meant that person has less worth or was not as good at anything, besides the actual challenges of the condition. And many challenges have a flip side where the other side is potentially useful.
I also didn’t like when the presenter brought up her husband who has ADHD for some anecdotes. Well, I understand how a presentation can be more appealing with human details to connect to. But I go to science for something better than anecdotes. I can get anecdotes from anyone. Science is for a kind of knowledge that might be deeper, more nuanced, and more trustworthy than funny stories. More data processed with good methods leads to better conclusions, we should hope.
I also didn’t like the othering I heard in the presentation. The speaker would say “they” and “us” in inaccurate ways. She seemed to assume that the listeners were all abled people. But probably many disabled people like me showed up just to learn about access. False us vs them is exhausting.
other things I noticed
I noticed that the presenter said a few times, about disabled employees in work spaces, “These people are professionals who have gone to school. They know what they need.” The idea was that if they could graduate with a degree, they can function in a workplace, and they have their own tricks for survival.
That might be true, but workplaces and schools are different, with different kinds of support. And I know that endurance is a big reason why I can’t work. I can pass as a functional person for the two hours of a class at school, but an eight hour work shift isn’t possible.
I like how the presenter mentioned stress as a factor that could increase the need for sensory accommodation. Yes, stress puts a crunch on everything. If something is a struggle, add stress, and for almost everyone it will become more of a struggle.
But I think 95% of workplaces are stressful. The reason you’re getting paid is that you wouldn’t do it for fun, oftentimes. Of course there was no acknowledgement that work is almost always going to be stressful, and stress is almost always bad for people’s health. So capitalism is killing us. But we’re supposed to act like that’s ok.
questions I had
Why did they talk about Deafness and blindness, but not other disabilities, in a neurodiversity talk? Maybe the talk had an inaccurate name.
Toward the end, the speaker said, “We can design spaces that work well for everyone,” and there was a slide depicting a space, but the space had stairs and no ramp. I was like, uh, everyone?
Why was the talk about access, but there was no access provided for the talk? Hmmm! Good question, Laura-Marie.
Were some of the people attending getting CEUs or there as part of a course? Was everyone there for fun, like me?
How much business did the scientist’s presentation drum up for her? Was the whole thing just a commercial?
How does covid and possibility of other pandemics affect the design of a space for disabled people? She mentioned pods which have less sensory input and distraction. But I wondered about germs collecting in pods. Unless someone cleans them between uses, sounds like a bad idea during modern germ danger times.
Where can I get a Master’s degree in disability?
Designing for every user – Neurodiversity in the workplace
I’m glad I attended the zoom Designing for every user – Neurodiversity in the workplace because it inspires a lot of thought. It reminds me of a friend of mine who loves Universal Design. It also reminds me of permaculture and Disabled Resilience Permaculture.
Maybe my overall favorite part of the presentation was how its existence shows the basic truth that different people need different things. Admitting that works so much better. I’m exhausted from hearing “we’re all the same and need the same things.” People who say that must be abled and think everyone is like them.
It’s like racism. People who say “We’re all the same inside! People who assert their culture are just making division!” are usually white people who don’t want to learn. They want every one to assimilate to their norm. It’s so dominant-centric. We can do way better than that.
I get so much pleasure from effective design. And loving disabled people is my life. I hope to learn much more about these topics in the future.
1 comment