The Community Guide to Neurodiversity Inclusion and Accessibility
Author: Bridgette Hamstead, MS
Fish in a Tree: Center for Neurodiversity Education, Advocacy, and Activism
New Orleans, Louisiana
www.fishinatreenola.org
© 2025 Fish in a Tree: Center for Neurodiversity Education, Advocacy, and Activism.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations used for educational, scholarly, or critical review purposes.
About Fish in a Tree
Fish in a Tree: Center for Neurodiversity Education, Advocacy, and Activism is a neurodivergent-led, justice-oriented organization headquartered in New Orleans, with a national and global reach. We provide consulting, education, public programming, and systemic advocacy that center neurodiversity as both a cultural and civil rights movement. Our work bridges scholarship, lived experience, and creative expression to advance a world where neurodivergent people can thrive without suppression.
Our flagship programs include:
The Neurodiversity Justice Bookshelf – a global book club and author series uplifting justice-aligned works by neurodivergent writers.
NeuroStage – a global speaker and performance series amplifying neurodivergent art, scholarship, and storytelling.
The Neurodiversity Pride Parade – New Orleans – the first U.S. parade dedicated to neurodiversity pride and justice-centered visibility.
Neurodiversity Consulting and Education – systemic redesign initiatives across education, healthcare, employment, and public culture.
Together, these programs form an ecosystem of neurodiversity justice infrastructure, translating inclusion from theory to practice.
About This Guide
The Community Guide to Neurodiversity Inclusion and Accessibility is part of Fish in a Tree’s Public Education Series, a suite of living documents designed to help communities, institutions, and organizations move beyond awareness toward systemic change. This guide was developed in response to recurring requests from educators, employers, festival organizers, public officials, and community leaders seeking practical, justice-aligned frameworks for neuro-inclusion.
Unlike compliance manuals or legal accessibility guides, this document approaches inclusion as a cultural transformation, not a checklist. It applies the social model of disability and the neurodiversity paradigm to the lived realities of communication, sensory design, policy, and public celebration. It is written from within the neurodivergent community and is informed by interdisciplinary research, lived experience, and the collective wisdom of global neurodiversity movements.
This guide pairs with The Community Guide to Neurodiversity Justice, a companion volume that explores the historical, philosophical, and systemic foundations of this work. Together, they provide both the moral framework and the practical blueprint for building neuro-inclusive cultures.
Suggested Citation
Hamstead, B. (2025). The Community Guide to Neurodiversity Inclusion and Accessibility.
New Orleans: Fish in a Tree: Center for Neurodiversity Education, Advocacy, and Activism.
Usage and Distribution
This publication is intended as an open-access educational resource for noncommercial use. You are welcome to share, teach from, and adapt portions of this guide with full attribution to Fish in a Tree and the author, provided no material is altered to misrepresent the principles of neurodiversity justice or used in alignment with pathologizing, behavioral, or deficit-based frameworks.
For permissions, inquiries, or consulting requests related to implementation, contact:
📧 bridgette@fishinatreeglobal.org
🌐 www.fishinatreeglobal.org
Author’s Preface
(Bridgette Hamstead, MS – Founding Director, Fish in a Tree: Center for Neurodiversity Education, Advocacy, and Activism)
This guide was written to answer a question I’ve been asked in hundreds of different ways: What does neurodiversity inclusion actually look like in practice?
I’ve watched the word “inclusion” get reduced to a buzzword in policy documents, mission statements, and strategic plans, invoked often, embodied rarely. I’ve seen organizations call themselves inclusive while designing environments that overwhelm, silence, or exhaust the very people they claim to welcome. And I’ve watched neurodivergent people, autistic, ADHD, dyslexic, dyspraxic, Tourette, OCD, and otherwise divergent, burn out under the weight of systems that were never built for our bodies, senses, or rhythms.
This guide was written as an antidote to that exhaustion. It is not a corporate training manual or a compliance checklist. It is a cultural document, born from lived experience, movement work, and community dialogue. It is written in the spirit of redesign, not adjustment, not accommodation, but reimagining the very assumptions about what it means to belong.
At Fish in a Tree: Center for Neurodiversity Education, Advocacy, and Activism, we operate from a simple truth: neurodiversity is not a diagnosis category, it is a cultural and ecological reality. Human minds have always been diverse. It is only through social, institutional, and architectural design that some minds are positioned as “normal” and others as “disordered.” Inclusion, therefore, is not an act of generosity, it is an act of justice.
We created this guide for communities, schools, workplaces, and public institutions ready to move beyond awareness toward systemic change. It draws from the neurodiversity paradigm, disability justice, and the social model of disability, but it also draws from something more intimate: lived expertise. Every section of this guide is informed by the wisdom of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people, artists, educators, organizers, and thinkers, whose experiences illuminate what access and belonging truly mean.
The structure of this guide follows a logic of transformation. We begin by dismantling the difference between integration and inclusion, because too often people mistake proximity for belonging. We then examine the politics of language and communication, understanding that words are the architecture of belonging and that no system can be inclusive while speaking the language of pathology. From there, we move into sensory design, policy reform, and public celebration, sites where theory becomes tangible. The later sections push us from accommodation toward belonging, and finally toward collective commitments: the ongoing practice of building spaces where all nervous systems can rest.
This work is not neutral. It asks communities to redistribute comfort, to unlearn hierarchy, and to confront the ableism woven through our most cherished norms, professionalism, composure, productivity, efficiency. It asks us to measure success not by compliance, but by the emotional truth of a space: do people feel safe enough to be real?
The reflections woven throughout are as important as the text itself. They are invitations, not assignments. They are meant to provoke, unsettle, and deepen the work. Real inclusion does not begin with strategy; it begins with reckoning, with the willingness to notice who is missing from the table and to ask why.
For those who work within institutions, this guide can serve as a framework for neuro-inclusion audits, policy redesign, or training. For those building community spaces, festivals, classrooms, workplaces, arts collectives, it can serve as a mirror, showing how culture itself can become accessible. But for neurodivergent readers, I hope this guide feels like recognition: a document that names what you have always known in your body, that your discomfort in certain spaces is not a personal failure, it is data. It is the nervous system’s way of telling the truth about design.
This guide is part of a broader ecosystem of work emerging from Fish in a Tree and the Neurodiversity Coalition of America. It connects to the Neurodiversity Justice Bookshelf, NeuroStage, and the Neurodiversity Pride Parade, public projects that bring these principles into culture, art, and celebration. Together, they form what we call neurodiversity justice infrastructure: systems built not just for survival, but for joy.
If you use this guide in your work, I ask you to do so relationally. Bring it to your team, your classroom, your boardroom, your festival committee. Read it aloud. Discuss it. Argue with it. Let it move you. Let it unsettle what you thought inclusion meant. Then, let it help you rebuild.
True inclusion will not come from templates or slogans. It will come from people willing to slow down, to listen differently, and to redesign the world from the inside out.
May this guide be a tool for that work, a companion in the long, beautiful labor of building communities where difference is not managed, but celebrated; where no one must mask to survive; and where belonging is not conditional, but inevitable.
1. Introduction: The Difference Between Inclusion and Integration
To understand what true neurodiversity inclusion means, we must first make a clear distinction between integration and inclusion. Integration is what happens when people who were never intended to belong are simply inserted into existing systems and told to adjust. It asks neurodivergent people to find ways to survive within structures designed for the comfort and efficiency of the neurotypical majority. It preserves the system and demands that we adapt to it.
Inclusion, on the other hand, is not about placement, it’s about transformation. It asks the system to change. True inclusion means reimagining the norms, values, and sensory realities of a community so that no one is forced to mask, minimize, or translate their natural way of being in order to participate. It demands that we question who sets the standards for “appropriate” behavior, “professional” conduct, or “effective” communication, and why those standards exist in the first place.
Within the framework of the social model of disability, disability is not inherent to a person’s body or mind; it arises when societal structures fail to accommodate the full range of human variation. The medical model says, you are the problem, you must be fixed. The social model says, the world is the problem, and it must be redesigned. When we speak of neurodiversity inclusion, we are not talking about pity, tolerance, or even fairness, we are talking about systemic redesign rooted in justice.
Neurodiversity, as a concept, recognizes that human brains are naturally variable, just as ecosystems depend on biodiversity for survival. There is no “normal brain” to measure all others against; rather, there is a spectrum of sensory, cognitive, and relational differences that contribute to collective intelligence. When society suppresses these differences through rigid expectations, inaccessible environments, and behavioral conformity, it loses vital forms of creativity, pattern recognition, empathy, and innovation that come from neurological diversity.
The goal of inclusion, then, is not to make neurodivergent people appear more neurotypical, it is to create systems flexible enough to accommodate diverse nervous systems without requiring suppression. Inclusion is ecological: it seeks balance, not uniformity. It acknowledges that environments, not individuals, must evolve.
Too often, organizations mistake inclusion for the mere presence of neurodivergent people within existing hierarchies. Schools boast of integrating autistic students into general education classrooms but continue to enforce compliance-based learning. Workplaces promote “neurodiversity hiring initiatives” but punish employees for needing quiet spaces or asynchronous communication. Festivals invite neurodivergent performers but fail to provide rest zones or regulate sound levels. These gestures, however well-intentioned, replicate the harm they claim to undo.
Integration is cosmetic; inclusion is structural. Integration says, “You can sit with us, as long as you act like us.” Inclusion says, “We’ll rebuild the table so that everyone can stay.”
The transformation from integration to inclusion requires a collective willingness to interrogate what we mean by normalcy. The term “normal” itself is a statistical fiction, a tool once used in eugenic frameworks to measure and rank human value. The neurodiversity movement exposes this fiction and reclaims the right of all minds to exist without hierarchy. Inclusion is therefore not charity; it is reparation. It asks: who was excluded by design, and what would it take to rebuild the system so that exclusion is no longer possible?
At Fish in a Tree, this question guides every program, every policy, and every act of community design. Inclusion is not a checklist. It is not a quiet room or a ramp added after construction. It is an ethos: a sustained commitment to redesigning culture, practice, and structure in partnership with neurodivergent people themselves.
When we build spaces where all nervous systems can thrive, we create the conditions for collective flourishing. We move from managing difference to celebrating it, from compliance to belonging, and from accommodation to justice.
Reflection: Who defines what “normal” looks like in this space? Whose comfort is prioritized, and whose is treated as disruption?
2. Language, Communication, and Culture
Language is not neutral, it is the architecture of belonging. Every word we use reflects a worldview, an implicit story about who is seen, who is silenced, and who is expected to change. When we speak about neurodivergent people, we are not simply describing reality; we are constructing it. This is why language reform has always been central to social justice movements. The words we choose can either reinforce the medical-industrial complex that pathologizes difference, or they can liberate us into new cultural understandings of what it means to be human.
At the core of neurodiversity-affirming communication is the rejection of language that positions neurodivergent existence as tragedy, burden, or disorder. Identity-first language, “autistic person,” “ADHD person,” “neurodivergent person,” centers difference as intrinsic and valuable, not as something detachable or shameful. In contrast, person-first constructions such as “person with autism” or “person living with ADHD” were originally developed by non-disabled professionals attempting to separate people from their diagnostic labels. While well-meaning, this linguistic distancing suggests that neurodivergence is an external affliction rather than an integral part of identity. For most of us, that framing erases rather than honors.
This is not mere semantics; research shows that language shapes public perception and policy. A 2016 study by Kenny et al. found that while the majority of autistic adults prefer identity-first language, professionals overwhelmingly favored person-first terms, reflecting a persistent power imbalance in who gets to define the discourse. When institutions insist on medicalized or euphemistic language, they reinforce a hierarchy where clinical authority outweighs lived experience. True inclusion requires relinquishing that control, listening to the communities we name and allowing them to name themselves.
Beyond terminology, communication equity must account for the extraordinary diversity of how humans express thought, emotion, and connection. Neurotypical norms prize rapid verbal exchange, emotional expressiveness, and eye contact, yet these are not universal or necessary for understanding. Autistic communication, for instance, often operates through depth rather than speed, favoring precision, honesty, and thematic continuity. ADHD communication can be nonlinear, associative, and improvisational, weaving insight through tangents. Both are forms of pattern-based meaning-making, not deficits in social skill.
To communicate inclusively means expanding what counts as legitimate expression. This includes written, typed, or visual communication; speech through augmentative or alternative devices; scripts, quotes, and echolalic repetition as tools for self-regulation; and info-dumping, the passionate sharing of detailed knowledge, as a gesture of intimacy. It also includes silence, which can be a form of respect, processing, or presence rather than withdrawal. Asynchronous communication, emails, written reflections, or pre-recorded video responses, should not be seen as avoidance but as access. Time, for many neurodivergent people, is an access need.
Creating communication equity requires environments that slow down the demand for instant response and make space for translation across neurotypes. Meetings can allow written contributions alongside spoken ones. Events can publish discussion questions in advance. Teachers can invite students to submit reflections rather than verbal participation grades. These adjustments do not diminish rigor or connection, they deepen them.
As Mia Mingus writes, access intimacy is “that elusive feeling when someone else gets your access needs on a fundamental level.” It is the opposite of tokenistic accommodation; it is relational understanding. To build access intimacy is to build trust. It means not asking neurodivergent people to constantly explain, justify, or apologize for the ways we communicate. It means presuming competence, even when communication looks unfamiliar.
It also means recognizing that language itself can be a sensory experience. The tone, pace, and rhythm of speech carry just as much meaning as the words themselves. For many neurodivergent people, the sensory load of spoken conversation, background noise, overlapping voices, shifting social cues, can be overwhelming. Written or text-based communication may therefore feel more spacious, more precise, more humane. Designing for communication access is designing for nervous system regulation.
Finally, we must acknowledge that language is cultural. The neurodiversity movement has its own evolving lexicon, words like “masking,” “unmasking,” “stimming,” “burnout,” and “executive dysfunction” that describe embodied realities once pathologized or unnamed. These words are not jargon; they are reclamation. They allow neurodivergent people to narrate our experiences on our own terms, building community through shared understanding. When organizations or educators adopt this language respectfully, they are not performing allyship, they are participating in cultural fluency.
To create a culture of inclusion is to understand that communication is never one-size-fits-all. It is a living, co-constructed process. It requires humility, curiosity, and the willingness to unlearn what we have been told about “appropriate” behavior. Every act of communication is a bridge. When we honor neurodivergent ways of speaking, moving, writing, and relating, we do more than make space, we remake the world in the image of genuine plurality.
Reflection: How does our language reflect power? Who is expected to translate their communication style to be understood? When someone communicates differently, do we perceive it as incompetence or difference?
3. Sensory Audits and Environmental Design
If language is the architecture of belonging, then the sensory world is the architecture of survival. Every space carries a sensory signature, a unique combination of light, sound, texture, smell, temperature, and movement that shapes how bodies feel, think, and relate within it. Yet most environments are designed for a narrow band of sensory experience: those who thrive under bright lights, constant noise, strong scents, and unpredictable motion. This narrowness is not neutral, it is cultural. It reflects an implicit expectation that regulation, endurance, and comfort should align with neurotypical thresholds.
For many neurodivergent people, the sensory landscape determines whether inclusion is possible at all. An autistic person may find fluorescent lights physically painful due to flicker sensitivity, even if invisible to others. Someone with ADHD may struggle in echoing rooms that fragment attention. A person with dyspraxia might navigate space more safely with clear visual pathways. Someone with sensory processing differences may become disoriented by overlapping sound or movement. These experiences are not preferences; they are physiological truths. And when ignored, they lead to chronic stress, burnout, and exclusion long before a single word is spoken.
A sensory audit begins not with a checklist but with empathy. It is an act of listening, of asking, “What does this space feel like to a nervous system unlike mine?” It acknowledges that inclusion begins at the level of the body. The goal is not to sterilize or simplify spaces, but to create environments that are predictable, navigable, and adaptable. Predictability reduces cognitive load. Clear signage, visual schedules, and consistent layouts help people orient themselves. Lighting that can be adjusted, dimmer switches, natural light, or indirect fixtures, allows individuals to calibrate their environment rather than endure it.
Sound management is critical. Research shows that sensory overload activates the amygdala and stress pathways, impairing focus, communication, and memory (Baranek et al., 2006; Green et al., 2020). Acoustic panels, carpeting, curtains, and sound-absorbing materials can transform auditory chaos into calm. Providing quiet zones or sound-buffered rooms signals that rest and regulation are legitimate needs, not special privileges. Similarly, offering access to noise-canceling headphones or visual earplugs can make the difference between participation and withdrawal.
Smell and texture, often overlooked, are powerful sensory determinants of comfort. Artificial fragrances, cleaning chemicals, or food odors can trigger migraines or nausea in hypersensitive individuals. Materials like synthetic carpet or plastic seating can carry persistent smells or irritating textures. Whenever possible, use neutral or natural materials, fragrance-free policies, and clear communication about sensory expectations (“Strong scents will be present at this event,” or “A smoke machine will be used during performance”). Transparency creates choice, and choice is a form of autonomy.
Spatial design matters just as much. Crowding, visual clutter, or unmarked transitions between zones can disorient or overwhelm. Neurodivergent-friendly environments tend to emphasize clarity: designated pathways, open sight lines, and simple visual information. Color can be used strategically to signal zones of calm or focus rather than overstimulation. Chairs or beanbags arranged in semi-circles, not rigid rows, can promote relational safety. Providing multiple seating options, standing desks, rocking chairs, floor cushions, acknowledges that regulation is physical, not purely cognitive.
Sensory dignity must replace sensory tolerance. Dignity means that people’s sensory needs are not treated as nuisances or exceptions but as valid expressions of embodiment. In too many spaces, neurodivergent individuals are expected to suppress stimming, fidgeting, or movement to avoid being seen as disruptive. Yet these behaviors are forms of self-regulation, communication, and presence. A sensory-inclusive environment not only allows them, it normalizes them. Visual cues, signage, or language like “Stimming Welcome Here” can shift culture from control to care.
Technology and spatial design should be used as tools of liberation, not surveillance. Sensory maps, visual guides that show quiet areas, rest zones, and high-traffic points, can empower participants to make informed choices about their environment. However, sensory audits must always be co-designed with neurodivergent people themselves, not imposed as performative gestures. A sensory-friendly event designed without lived expertise is still a neurotypical construction of comfort.
It is also vital to understand that sensory regulation is communal. When one person is overstimulated, everyone’s experience of connection deteriorates. A dysregulated environment produces a dysregulated culture. Conversely, when environments are calm, predictable, and inclusive, they nurture not only neurodivergent nervous systems but all nervous systems. Studies on Universal Design show that features developed for accessibility, like captioning, adjustable lighting, or quiet spaces, enhance usability for everyone (Steinfeld & Maisel, 2012).
Designing sensory-inclusive environments is not expensive, but it does require intention. It asks planners, educators, and leaders to see accessibility as design literacy, not charity. It demands curiosity about how architecture, policy, and culture interact with the human nervous system. The question is not “What can we add to make this accessible?” but “What are we willing to change to make this safe?”
Reflection: Would this environment overwhelm or soothe a dysregulated nervous system? Do we design for sensory preference or sensory neutrality? Whose bodies and senses is this space built for?
4. Policy and Procedure Audits
Policies are stories that have hardened into rules. Every policy, whether written or unspoken, tells a story about what a community values, and whom it expects to accommodate those values. When institutions say “we welcome everyone” but maintain attendance, performance, and disciplinary standards built around neurotypical functioning, inclusion collapses under contradiction. True accessibility requires not only physical redesign but procedural and cultural reform. Policies must be rewritten to reflect the diversity of human minds, energy patterns, and ways of being.
Many of the most exclusionary barriers are invisible. They live in attendance requirements that punish fluctuating energy levels, in productivity expectations that equate stillness with laziness, or in communication norms that reward those who speak fastest or loudest. They appear in performance reviews that prioritize “team fit” over contribution, and in evaluation rubrics that mistake social ease for competence. These structures teach people to mask, to suppress authentic behavior and sensory needs in order to survive. In doing so, they perpetuate chronic stress and burnout.
A policy audit asks us to interrogate these unspoken hierarchies. It is a process of surfacing the assumptions embedded within our procedures and asking: who benefits? who bears the cost? Policies written for efficiency often externalize the labor of inclusion, placing the burden on neurodivergent individuals to self-advocate, disclose, and navigate bureaucracy. This model presumes equal access to time, energy, and safety, which many do not have. A justice-oriented audit begins from the opposite assumption: that the system, not the person, must flex.
In the employment context, this means examining job descriptions that overemphasize multitasking, social agility, or “thriving in fast-paced environments.” Research shows that autistic and ADHD adults face higher unemployment not due to lack of skill but due to hiring biases and inaccessible environments (Botha, Dibb, & Frost, 2022). Instead of “culture fit,” organizations can adopt a “culture expand” model, valuing cognitive diversity as an innovation driver and adjusting processes to support it. Interviews might include written or asynchronous options. Meetings might allow cameras-off participation, typed input, or advance agendas. Performance metrics should shift from hours logged to impact achieved.
In education, similar audits can expose how compliance-based systems disadvantage neurodivergent students. Attendance policies often ignore the neurological realities of fatigue, overstimulation, or executive dysfunction. Grading criteria that emphasize verbal participation or speed penalize deep processors. Standardized testing environments, fluorescent lighting, timed sessions, and strict silence, are not assessments of knowledge but of endurance. Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018) offers an alternative: multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression, acknowledging that learning is not a single-path process.
Institutional procedures also encode emotional expectations. Many workplaces and schools value “professionalism,” “emotional regulation,” and “composure” without defining them. In practice, these often mean suppressing visible distress, masking sensory responses, or maintaining affective neutrality, behaviors that reflect neurotypical comfort, not universal capacity. When “appropriate behavior” becomes a euphemism for “undisruptive to the majority,” neurodivergent expression is pathologized. A policy audit reframes these standards as cultural artifacts, not moral truths.
Accessibility statements deserve particular scrutiny. Too often they are written as legal disclaimers rather than living commitments. A performative accessibility statement signals compliance; a transformative one invites collaboration. Instead of saying, “If you need accommodations, contact HR,” an inclusive policy might say, “We understand that needs change over time. You may request adjustments at any point without formal diagnosis or justification. Our goal is mutual comfort, not compliance.” The difference is tone, and tone communicates trust.
Procedural justice also involves addressing disciplinary systems. Traditional punishment models, detention, termination, or public reprimand, disproportionately target neurodivergent individuals whose behaviors are misread through neurotypical lenses. A justice audit replaces punitive frameworks with restorative ones. Rather than asking, “How do we correct this behavior?” it asks, “What need was unmet, and how can we support regulation and repair?” Restorative processes emphasize understanding over control, accountability over punishment, and repair over retribution.
Another overlooked site of exclusion is time. Institutional timetables are built on capitalist and neurotypical assumptions about linearity, speed, and stamina. Breaks are short; meetings run long; tasks are scheduled without sensory recovery time. Yet neuroscience shows that sustained cognitive load without rest leads to diminished focus, irritability, and executive dysfunction (Arnsten, 2009; Ashinoff & Abu-Akel, 2019). Policies should institutionalize rest, not as reward but as right. Flexible scheduling, asynchronous deadlines, and recovery days recognize that sustainable productivity is cyclical, not constant.
Crucially, audits must be co-led by neurodivergent people with lived experience of navigating these systems. Without that, the process risks reproducing the same power dynamics it seeks to challenge. Compensation for lived expertise should be standard. Neurodivergent-led review boards or accessibility councils can ensure ongoing accountability rather than one-time evaluation. Policies are living documents; they must evolve as community needs do.
To create inclusive policy is to rewrite cultural logic. It means replacing suspicion with trust, rigidity with responsiveness, and compliance with care. It demands that we stop asking neurodivergent people to adapt to systems designed against us and instead teach systems to adapt to the full spectrum of humanity.
Reflection: Which of our policies reward conformity? Do our feedback systems assume verbal fluency or emotional composure? Where is there room for rest, flexibility, and recovery?
5. Public Spaces, Festivals, and Celebrations
Public life is where culture announces its values. Our festivals, parades, markets, and community gatherings reveal who is invited into joy, and who is excluded from it. When a city closes its streets for a parade, when a neighborhood fills with music, food, and lights, when people gather to celebrate identity or heritage, we are witnessing what a society believes connection should feel like. But for many neurodivergent people, these spaces are physically painful, socially perilous, or emotionally exhausting. The very events that claim to represent inclusion and pride often reproduce sensory and social exclusion at scale.
This exclusion is rarely intentional. It happens because most public events are designed around a narrow sensory and social template: constant noise, crowds, bright lights, spontaneous interaction, and rapid transitions. These are conditions under which many neurodivergent people cannot regulate their nervous systems, communicate effectively, or remain in their bodies. The result is not just discomfort, it is erasure. When the only way to belong is through overstimulation or performance, participation becomes impossible without harm.
A neuro-inclusive approach to public life begins by reframing what celebration means. Joy does not have to be loud. Connection does not have to be crowded. Inclusion does not mean tolerating difference at the edge of the festival grounds; it means embedding access, predictability, and consent into the core design. The question is not, “How can we make this event accessible for disabled people?” but “How can we build a world where no one is left behind by joy?”
Drawing on Fish in a Tree’s community frameworks like Shrimp Fest and NeuroStage, this section envisions festivals and public spaces as laboratories of sensory justice. Accessibility should not be a retrofitted add-on; it should be the foundation. Every decision, sound, lighting, layout, signage, communication, programming, can either amplify harm or cultivate belonging.
Sensory Inclusion and Environmental Care The sensory environment is the first determinant of inclusion. Sound levels should be mapped and managed intentionally. Instead of blasting music through centralized loudspeakers, consider directional sound zones, or volume-calibrated performances with clear schedules so attendees can choose when to engage. Offer “quiet hours” or sensory-friendly blocks with reduced noise, dimmed lighting, and controlled crowd density. Provide visual maps labeling quiet zones, rest areas, hydration stations, and exits. Post schedules and sensory information online in advance, transparency allows regulation.
Lighting choices matter enormously. Avoid flashing lights, strobe effects, or rapid visual transitions that can trigger sensory distress or seizures. Natural or diffuse lighting promotes orientation and safety. Similarly, temperature control, shaded seating, and access to cooling areas can prevent overheating, which disproportionately affects autistic and ADHD bodies with atypical sensory regulation. These are not luxuries; they are necessities for nervous system safety.
Rest Zones and Regulation Spaces Every neuro-inclusive event should have clearly designated rest zones, low-stimulation spaces where participants can decompress without judgment. These areas might include comfortable seating, soft lighting, weighted blankets, fidget tools, hydration, and silence. Volunteers should be trained to recognize signs of sensory overwhelm, rocking, covering ears, nonverbal shutdown, and to offer supportive options without intrusion. Rest zones are not optional accommodations; they are the nervous system equivalent of wheelchair ramps.
Communication Access and Consent Norms Neurodivergent people communicate in diverse ways, and festivals are often social minefields where scripted interactions dominate. Communication badges, small, color-coded indicators that show one’s openness to conversation, help reduce social pressure. Signage and volunteer training should normalize both verbal and nonverbal communication. Written programs, visual boards, and captioning make events more cognitively accessible.
Consent must extend beyond physical touch to include conversation, photography, and performance participation. Neurodivergent people are frequently misread as “aloof” or “unapproachable” when they are simply regulating or conserving energy. Clear consent norms teach the wider community to interpret difference as difference, not rejection. In neuro-inclusive spaces, silence is respected, stimming is welcome, and participation is always optional.
Representation and Cultural Accessibility Representation must move beyond tokenism. Neurodivergent artists, organizers, and speakers should be involved in every stage of event design, from planning to performance. Representation is not about optics; it’s about perspective. When neurodivergent people lead creative and logistical decisions, events become richer, more imaginative, and more ethical.
Cultural accessibility also means honoring the intersectionality of neurodivergence. Queer, disabled, and neurodivergent communities often overlap, and so do their struggles for safe space. Pride events, for example, should consider that the very people they claim to represent, queer neurodivergent individuals, are often excluded by their sensory intensity. The same is true for cultural festivals that celebrate diversity while ignoring disability as part of it. Inclusion is hollow if it ends at the body’s edge.
Trauma-Informed Design and Crisis Preparedness Many neurodivergent people have trauma histories linked to sensory overwhelm, restraint, or social humiliation. Public spaces must adopt trauma-informed design, where predictability, choice, and safety are prioritized. Information about what to expect, noise levels, crowd flow, emergency exits, should be clearly communicated. Security and volunteer teams should be trained in de-escalation that centers autonomy and consent, never physical control. “Calm tents” or decompression areas should be available during large-scale events.
Preparedness also includes planning for shutdowns, meltdowns, or panic episodes without shame. A meltdown is not aggression; it is a physiological crisis. A trained support team can offer grounding options, quiet retreat, water, or a safe exit, without public attention or punitive response. By normalizing these responses, we build collective literacy in nervous system compassion.
Public Joy as Collective Healing Celebration itself can be a site of healing. When neurodivergent people are visible in public joy, not performing for others but resting, laughing, dancing, stimming, creating, we begin to undo centuries of pathologization. The sight of unmasked presence is revolutionary. It rewires social imagination: people learn that inclusion is not pity, that difference is not disruption, that the nervous system’s honesty is a gift.
Festivals like Shrimp Fest or NeuroStage model this principle. They integrate neurodivergent leadership, sensory design, and cultural education into every layer of programming. They demonstrate that joy and justice are not competing priorities, they are the same thing. Public celebration becomes a declaration of existence, a living reminder that community is strongest when all bodies can breathe together.
Reflection: How do our celebrations reinforce or disrupt social hierarchies of worth? Are our events designed for connection or consumption? Where do quiet joy, solitude, and rest belong in celebration?
6. Moving from Accommodation to Belonging
Accommodation is a beginning, not an end. It is what happens when a system recognizes that someone has been left out and makes a small adjustment so they can squeeze in. Belonging, on the other hand, is what happens when we rebuild the system so that no one is left out to begin with. The difference between the two is moral, structural, and emotional. Accommodation still treats access as an exception, something requested, granted, and documented. Belonging makes access the default.
When communities stop at accommodation, they leave intact the power imbalance that defines who must ask and who gets to decide. It keeps neurodivergent people in the position of supplicant, always requesting permission to exist differently. It also maintains the illusion that inclusion is expensive or complicated, when in truth, exclusion is what costs us most. Every hour spent masking, every meeting endured under fluorescent light, every conversation where one must fake comprehension to appear competent, exacts a neurological tax. Belonging is the economic, emotional, and ethical correction to that tax.
Belonging cannot be achieved through compliance checklists, policy documents, or even good intentions. It emerges from culture, an ongoing practice of mutual care, curiosity, and redesign. It asks not only what needs to change but who gets to lead the change. In belonging-centered systems, neurodivergent people are not consulted at the end; we are co-authors from the start. We are paid for our expertise, respected for our lived knowledge, and trusted to define success by our own measures of safety and authenticity.
To move from accommodation to belonging, organizations and communities must first examine their motivations. Accommodation often arises from guilt or liability, avoiding complaint, compliance violations, or reputational harm. Belonging arises from love, from the recognition that diversity of thought, perception, and sensory experience makes collective intelligence stronger. The former is reactive; the latter is generative. One builds walls with ramps; the other imagines a world without stairs.
In practice, belonging looks like fluidity. It is the meeting where an employee can turn off their camera, stim freely, or contribute through a shared document without penalty. It is the classroom where movement breaks and quiet reflection are normalized, not negotiated. It is the festival where quiet joy, solitude, and sensory play coexist with dancing, drumming, and laughter. It is the policy that says: your body’s truth will not be punished here.
Belonging also asks us to slow down. Urgency is a feature of ableist and capitalist culture, it privileges those with consistent energy, rapid processing, and linear task flow. But many neurodivergent people experience energy as cyclical, attention as tidal, and creativity as nonlinear. When we slow collective pace, we make room for this diversity to thrive. We also restore nervous system health for everyone. Studies show that neurotypical participants in “low-stimulation environments” exhibit reduced cortisol, improved focus, and higher empathy (Ulrich et al., 1991; Berman et al., 2008). Accessibility benefits the collective nervous system, not only the individual.
To foster belonging, leaders must also redefine success. The metrics of productivity, speed, output, availability, must give way to metrics of well-being, trust, and creative contribution. This shift requires courage, because it reveals that many institutional practices were never about excellence but about control. True inclusion threatens the illusion of efficiency. But belonging, once established, yields deeper engagement, innovation, and loyalty. When people no longer waste energy pretending, they can invest that energy in creation, connection, and care.
Belonging also redefines accountability. In a compliance model, accountability means proving adherence to policy. In a belonging model, accountability means showing up relationally: listening when harm occurs, repairing trust, and iterating together. It acknowledges that even inclusive communities will fail at times, but that failure is not shameful if it becomes a site of learning. What matters is responsiveness, not perfection.
At Fish in a Tree, belonging is not an abstract goal; it is a practice of redesigning systems from within. Whether through consulting, public programming, or advocacy, the organization treats belonging as an ecological principle: every being has a niche, and no ecosystem can sustain itself when diversity is suppressed. To cultivate belonging is to create conditions where regulation is possible, difference is honored, and comfort is distributed equitably rather than hoarded by the dominant group.
Ultimately, belonging is a sensory and relational experience. You know it not because someone told you that you belong, but because your nervous system can rest. You breathe more slowly. You stop rehearsing what to say before you say it. You stop apologizing for needing quiet or solitude. You laugh without worrying if your laughter sounds right. In that moment, the work of inclusion has succeeded, not because the system tolerated you, but because it finally became spacious enough for everyone.
Reflection: If no one needed to ask for an accommodation, what would this space look like? What would collective care look like in practice? Are we willing to change our pace, our expectations, and our metrics of success?
7. Collective Commitments and Ongoing Practice
Inclusion is not a finished product, it is a living process. No organization, school, or community ever reaches a final state of “fully inclusive,” because inclusion is not a status; it is a verb. It is the continuous act of listening, adjusting, redistributing comfort, and realigning power. To sustain inclusion requires not only policy and design but culture: a shared ethic of accountability, humility, and repair. Communities committed to neurodiversity inclusion must accept that this work is iterative and relational, not technical. It cannot be achieved through one-off trainings, consultant checklists, or public statements, because the heart of inclusion is not compliance, it is care.
The most important first step is collective self-examination. Communities should begin by naming what they believe about difference. What stories have we inherited about productivity, intelligence, or professionalism? What assumptions do we make about how people should behave to be considered cooperative, respectful, or capable? Every culture has its hidden curriculum, the unwritten social rules that govern belonging. In neurotypical environments, this curriculum rewards conformity: maintaining eye contact, suppressing movement, thinking on one’s feet, modulating tone, reading subtext. Yet none of these are measures of morality or merit—they are aesthetic preferences that have been mistaken for social competence. A collective commitment to inclusion begins by naming these preferences and refusing to confuse them with worth.
Public commitments should be concrete and embodied, not rhetorical. Every community can write an inclusion statement, but too many of these are abstract, aspirational, or focused on optics rather than practice. A meaningful inclusion statement reads like an invitation and a promise. It acknowledges past exclusion, names specific barriers, and commits to ongoing action. It might include pledges to offer multiple modes of communication, to publish sensory information for events in advance, to pay neurodivergent speakers equitably, to normalize flexible deadlines, or to maintain rest spaces at all gatherings. These commitments should be visible, not buried on a website, but displayed in public spaces, shared in staff meetings, and revisited regularly.
Crucially, inclusion cannot be stewarded by a single person or department. It must live across every level of the organization. Accessibility officers or diversity committees are not the end point; they are the scaffolding for a collective ethic. Everyone, from leadership to volunteers, should understand that inclusion is part of their role. Regular reflection meetings, co-facilitated by neurodivergent and neurotypical participants, can serve as a cultural mirror: What’s working? What’s not? What new access needs have emerged? What harms have gone unaddressed? These sessions are not audits for punishment but spaces for co-learning and repair.
Fish in a Tree encourages communities to move toward what might be called living inclusion ecosystems, dynamic, relational networks where accessibility is integrated into design, policy, art, and daily rhythm. These ecosystems are rooted in interdependence rather than independence, and in sustainability rather than perfection. They rely on feedback loops rather than top-down mandates. When accessibility is everyone’s shared responsibility, communities become more adaptive and resilient.
Another layer of ongoing practice involves building neurodivergent leadership pipelines. Inclusion that relies on the labor of a few exhausted advocates will always collapse under its own weight. To ensure longevity, communities must invest in mentorship, training, and paid leadership opportunities for neurodivergent people at all levels. This is not token representation, it is structural justice. Leadership diversity ensures that decisions are informed by lived expertise and that accountability mechanisms are embedded in governance, not appended as afterthoughts.
Belonging and accountability also depend on the ability to respond when harm occurs. Even well-intentioned inclusive communities will make mistakes: a staff member uses ableist language; an event forgets to provide captioning; a participant experiences sensory overload because a quiet space was too close to a speaker. What distinguishes a justice-aligned community from a performative one is the response. A healthy system prioritizes repair, transparency, and trust-building over defensiveness. “We got it wrong” is not a failure, it’s an invitation to grow. Neurodiversity justice is not about purity; it’s about practice.
Communities may also choose to implement structured reflection processes like Neuro-Inclusion Audits, living tools that evolve with community feedback. These audits might include sections on physical environment, communication, policy, and culture, each scored not for compliance but for consciousness. Rather than asking, “Do we have an accessibility statement?” they might ask, “Do people in our community feel safe enough to request support?” or “Have we redistributed resources or authority to those most excluded?” The emphasis shifts from documentation to transformation.
To sustain these practices, link them to the broader network of neurodiversity culture and public programs. Fish in a Tree’s ecosystem, spanning NeuroStage, the Neurodiversity Justice Bookshelf, and the Neurodiversity Pride Parade, models public accountability. Each program embodies inclusion as practice: diverse leadership, transparent processes, sensory-aware design, and ongoing reflection. Communities can draw inspiration from these structures, adapting them locally to their own contexts.
Ultimately, collective commitments are about emotional infrastructure. They create the social scaffolding that allows everyone’s nervous system to rest in shared trust. We measure success not by checkboxes or attendance but by atmosphere: by whether people laugh more freely, move without apology, or stay longer because they feel safe. True inclusion is not a strategy, it is a sensation.
When inclusion is working, you can feel it. The air changes. Conversations slow down. People stop translating themselves. You hear the hum of coexistence, a chorus of pacing, pausing, stimming, resting, connecting. No one has to shrink to stay. That is what community feels like when difference is not an interruption but the rhythm itself.
Reflection: What do we owe one another in shared spaces? How will we know we are succeeding, not by metrics, but by how people feel in our presence?