7 principles for neuro-inclusivity
Engaging with neurodivergent people
Is neurodiversity an under-appreciated area of diversity and inclusion?
It’s best practice to ensure that consultations and communications address the seldom-heard, opening a dialogue with the diverse demographic and sectional groups that make up a community.
But how many include neurodiversity as a key consideration? How many people even know that over 15% of the UK population are neurodivergent?
What is neurodiversity?
Neurodiversity reflects the diversity of all human brains. It includes people with dyslexia, autism, ADHD and dyspraxia, among other neurological conditions.
Contrary to popular belief, great minds don’t all think alike. Neurodiversity is the concept that all humans vary in neurocognition, recognizing the unique strengths and challenges that derive from thinking, learning and communicating differently.
When we plan consultations and engagements, we need to recognize this. Failure risks excluding neurodivergent people and their contributions.
While accessibility is rooted in most communication streams (eg website development), accessibility measures often have a narrow focus. Emphasis is placed on ensuring that audiences can physically obtain information – less regard is given to whether individuals can use the information to take part in the process.
By considering how neurodiverse individuals think and retain messaging, we are widening the conversation. As we move further into an age of digital content, wider connections enable brands to reach new audiences, revealing challenges they didn’t know existed.
7 principles for neurodivergent accessibility and inclusion
Our neurodiversity in planning toolkit, created with help from neurodivergent voices and experts including Genius Within, allows businesses to recognise and engage with the neurodivergent 15%.
Involve neurodiverse voices
Preferences and unconscious biases mean that what seems accessible or easy to understand to you is not accessible for other people.
Involve others in your team, or reach out to experts. Consider appointing neurodiversity champions in your organization to focus on making all communications as accessible as possible to as many as possible.
Big picture first
Keep the main theme or area of focus of your activity at the forefront of what you’re doing. Devise a clear structure and user journey. Clutter can divide attention, cause people to miss things and increase the amount of time and concentration it takes to digest information.
Show what matters
Different members of your audience will have different priorities when engaging with you. This may mean you need to provide a lot of information, each competing for the user’s attention.
There’ll also be common interests that most visitors are seeking out. It’s important that this information is the clearest to find and focus on.
Keep it clear
All engagement has a desired outcome: providing feedback, informing or addressing concerns. Engagement work must be clear, compelling and impossible to miss. Use plain language and avoid jargon.
A picture tells a thousand words. Where possible, use imagery to help explain your text. This can make your content easier to understand among those who struggle with reading.
User choice
Be flexible. Provide choice: what works for you may not work for everyone, so all engagement should have the flexibility to provide choice of how they wish to engage. Presenting information in different ways also maximizes opportunities to digest and understand it.
Be considerate
Consider the overall sensory experience of communications efforts. Create a welcoming environment, acknowledging that one size does not fit all. If you’re hosting an event, is the atmosphere welcoming and inclusive? Will people want to spend time at the venue? Think about layout, attitude of staff and even temperature.
Always adapt
Be open to feedback and be prepared to act on it. Be clear on the purpose of providing feedback and how it will be considered. Perhaps incorporate a mechanism that allows for feedback on how the engagement work was conducted. This could be as simple as a smiley face feedback tool.
The aim is accessibility for a neurodiverse audience, allowing the neurodivergent to contribute in ways that suit them. Hopefully, this will be the start of a conversation that will help to inform changes in consultation and how we engage with all parts of a community.
Applying the seven principles
It takes time for habits to change and at BECG we’re continually looking to apply these principles as best and standard practice. For the webpage of the toolkit itself, we consulted neurodiverse people, led with the seven principles, trimmed the fat of the content, built in user choice in the way the content is presented and continually welcome further feedback.
A lot of this is just good communications practice. If improving accessibility is as simple as that, then let’s see these principles deployed everywhere and continue along this path to accessibility.