A Neurodivergent Perspective of the Ellison Environment

Note: Ellison is my building at Northumbria. Most of the post relates to the experience of academic settings in general, though!

“Neurodiverse” just means that our brains and nervous systems can vary. Some of us vary enough that it’s useful to have specific labels (autism, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety …. The list goes on). To me, this aspect of my identity means that I while I can find glorious patterns in any leaf I walk past, I can also fail to recognise sound patterns (such as words!) in everyday environments.

What makes an accessible sensory environment? We all need the right sensory thresholds to energise us. This is very individual – what counts as a mess to one person can be another persons’ “comfortably lived in”. We all need a minimum amount of input, whether social, physical, visual (colour or complexity) to work effectively, but not so much that we are distracted. (Dunn, 2009)

Those of us with sensory processing differences can have extremely low or high thresholds. Maybe we need more input to be able to focus, or maybe less. Either way, our cognitive capacities are drastically affected by the environment. For me, as for many autistic people, I am extremely sensitive to noise – it’s distracting, and what other people can ignore or “tune out” makes it impossible to hear conversations. This is often compounded by auditory processing difficulties. In a busy environment I can hear maybe the first third of a sentence, and if I try really hard to catch up, maybe the last third too. Unfortunately, by this time my reduced processing capacity from the environment has usually caused me to forget the first part of the sentence. This difficulty hearing, combined with the pain of loud noise, means I’ve now given up attending most social events with my wider research group. Sadly, if everyone is invited, I’m probably not.

My inability to attend is no-one’s fault, as we don’t have a handy field next to the office as an alternative location. Dealing with conflicting access needs is a common problem and here the group needs clearly take precedence. Busy, noisy rooms are just not accessible to me, and if I’m there it’s to influence someone else’s view of me as a person to engage with, and not to actually engage myself, because I can’t. However, many other situations can become more accessible with very simple changes. Control over windows, lighting etc in a room; control over lines of sight; rooms designed with enough soft furnishings to avoid echoes are all accessible spaces. Meeting rooms of different sizes and areas for socialising with varied furniture are all very reasonable from a productivity point of view, but become essential when considered as an accessibility perspective. A quiet room (perhaps one of those meeting rooms, in a pinch?) would allow colleagues and students to manage the sensory build-up on campus. I remember being surprised at the horror expressed by colleagues when I told them that I retreated to the floor of the disabled toilet during training courses; nowhere else was available and private, and anyway I’d long been taught to keep my problems to myself.

So many inclusive adaptations can be made simply by being willing to alter the environment if you’re in charge of a meeting or space. Others, unfortunately, must be made through building changes. I was extremely surprised to see Ellison rate so highly on “Neurodivergent Considerations” in the recent building access survey (Faculty EDI newsletter and April estates update, 17^th April). (My personal thoughts on the Ellison environment can be found at the very end).  My office is in Ellison D, for which am grateful: without my thicker windows I would have been forced out of the university. But I teach often in Ellison A, which is extremely draining. In between double lectures I do have to run and hide in the toilet and hope no one needs to dry their hands. When teaching in those rooms, additional outside noise can make it hard to organise my thoughts into a sentence. It’s deeply humiliating to know students are watching me fail to explain something simple just because I ended up in a room with thin windows – it’s not great for my self-image as a lecturer, either! Sometimes at work I wear a peaked cap and even a hood in addition to my noise cancelling headphones to reduce visual input from bright lights, reflections and cramped corridors with many people and posters. I have to work from home part of each week because the city is so busy and my workplace is not completely safe. None of this was reflected in the high mark received for “neurodiversity considerations”.

On further digging, this seems to be due to the guidance for the grading in the survey, which wasn’t easy to use. Because sensory needs are so individual, there are no one-size-fits-all accessibility recommendations and workplace environment are control, variety and choice over one’s environment. It’s also unusual to list sensory barriers as an accessibility issue even on purpose-built platforms such as AccessAble. However, there are many excellent checklists. Two that I think would work well for quickly understanding an autistic persons’ sensory needs are the National Autistic Society’s environment and information checklist (pages 2-3) and Part A of the checklist by Simpson, 2020 (which I like as it goes through sense-by-sense). (For people with larger scale responsibilities over facilities, there is the excellent report by the British Council for Offices, BCO 2022 with a checklist on p 40, and there’s also the baseline recommendations in Annex B of the BSI 2022 Guide ). So there are plenty of resources to use. Both the BCO report and Weber et al. 2022 are very clear that (1) reducing overall environment stimulation, (2) managing (not removing!) social stimulation and (3) individual control over the environment are related to improvements in occupational longevity, performance and health/well-being.

What can individual members of staff do? My personal suggestions are:

1. Normalise small adjustments to the environment, especially if the power dynamic is in your favour (e.g. start student appointments by asking if they are comfortable)
2. Normalise hybrid meetings and captions or transcripts. Hearing all the words is essential to taking part.
3. If you see someone fidgeting or stimming (making repeated movements), let them. They are controlling their (very) local environment.
4. Update / remove posters once they’ve served their purpose.
5. Mute notifications when you’re running meetings. You may be able to ignore them, but each one may take a significant chunk of someone else’s attention.

People being willing to open and shut windows has made the difference between turning up to meetings to show my face and being able to actually take part. Even a small amount of understanding can make a huge difference: understanding that the environment always affects our ability to concentrate, but that this is much more significant for some people; that some of these people may not be fully aware of the effect (because society has historically denied these experiences) and that if they are aware, they may not want to draw attention to it for fear of the social consequences.

Sensory processing is not always the most impactful component of autism. It is, however, easy to change and the most socially acceptable one to discuss because it’s one that people are now (mostly) ready to understand. Nor are sensory difficulties unique to autistic people. Just by reading and understanding these experiences, you are making space for us to engage more equally in the department.

PS: I am terrified of open desk space and hotdesking. In addition to the discomfort of uncertainty around where I will sit, how I will manage any meetings etc, there is anxiety about anticipating the future sensory environment and sadness at the knowledge I will not be able to work as effectively. Well, I call it anxiety, but “anxiety” is distress without cause. Yet I know the cause – more sensory input than I can manage. Let’s hope we don’t move to this, because I and people like me will struggle.

Links:

Winnie Dunn, Living Sensationally, 2009, Jessica Kingsley Publishers

BSI 2022 Guide, Design for the Mind. Neurodiversity & the Built Environment – PAS 6463, https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/insights-and-media/insights/brochures/pas-6463-design-for-the-mind-neurodiversity-and-the-built-environment/

British Council for Offices (2022). Designing for Neurodiversity. (the link is broken, ask if you want a copy!)

Weber et al., 2022. Physical workplace adjustments to support neurodivergent workers: A systematic review. Applied Psychology, 73(3), 910–962. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12431

Autism-friendly Checklists, National Autistic Society, https://dy55nndrxke1w.cloudfront.net/file/24/xT2FqU_xTpTdEkJxTF-txbQ_2h_/NAS_Autism-friendly%20Checklists.pdf

Checklist for Autism-Friendly Environments, https://www.southwestyorkshire.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Checklist-for-autism-friendly-environments.pdf

Simpson S (2020) Creating accessible healthcare environments for people with autism. Nursing Times [online]; 116: 1, 48-50 (read online here, or pdf here)

All sites accessed 21^st May 2025.

Personal Ellison Grading

Done well:

• Floors in teaching rooms are generally carpeted, reducing echoes.
• Signs are posted regularly in slightly different formats (for those who are struggling with attention).
• Ellison D has double-glazed windows which can be used to either reduce motorway sound or air the room out, based on an individuals’ needs.
• Variety of lighting options in many lecture rooms, from dim to bright, front or back.

Done poorly:

• Most teaching rooms have single glazed windows that do not remove sound of traffic, building work or grounds maintenance. I know this is a problem for both lecturers and students. (I’m in maths, we get quite a few such students)
• The double-glazed windows often break and are therefore stuck open for months at a time.
• No / very few meeting rooms available for groups <10 (that allow for control of sensory input such as sight or sound). For either staff or students – so students will not remain on campus outside of lectures, consequently missing important opportunities to work with their peers.
• No quiet, private spaces for students who require a low-sensory, private space (not even toilets!). As a member of staff I either hide under my colleague’s desk or go to the post room.
• Student workspaces tend to be very open plan which means lots of noise and visual distractions. Movable poster dividers would easily achieve this.
• No individual disabled toilets (that I know of), which would allow students to avoid the painful noise of hand dryers.
• Many corridors are narrow with many posters (too much information) that are out of date and not useful, but also distracting.