To ask for some concrete examples of ways in which the world is ‘designed for NT people’?

[MaybeND]

I think I’m missing something as I’m just not really getting this aspect of neurodivergence which people keep talking about.

Restaurants when I was a child were quiet and slow and dark. Modern restaurants are bright and echoy and have open kitchens with heat and noise. Not at all ND friendly.

Rightly or wrongly, and I understand technically it's wrongly, but the drive to accommodate neuro diversity is starting to smack a bit of "first world problems", to me now. The timing really isn't great.

I've lost count of the amount of times I've walked into a restaurant and straight back out again because the music is too loud. I understand why they have music on but I don't want to feel like I'm in a nightclub!

Would you say the same to those of us with physical disabilities who require accommodations too?

I find too much noise physically hurts. Too much light hurts my head a lot too

And they are ND friendly for some because they are dark and have heat and noise.

The works has to be designed for the majority!!!!! It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise!!!!

100%.

Well the world will obviously be designed for NT people by default because the most mainstream things are designed for mass market and the majority of people.
It’s not always, but can be a negative.

But some people do want that and really a business can do what they want. If most people are happy with loud music, or enough people, it will be a profitable business, if most people don’t like it then the business will fail.

"we need your consent to do X" is a social cue that means "if you don't consent everything gets worse and we will treat you as hostile and/or you won't get what you need from this interaction".

There are definitely a lot of social cues in life that can get tiring to deal with all the time. But I don't think this is what 'we need your consent' should mean for anyone. HCPs should be making sure that everyone who is capable (or their representative) understands their treatment options properly. This too often doesn't happen for a bunch of reasons, many not to do with neurodiversity.

I think there's also the element that a lot of the world isn't designed for NT people, it's designed as 'what can we get away with'. Sometimes for a reasonable reason. e.g. McDonald's is bright and noisy and the colours of red and yellow are not welcoming and comforting. That's because the business model is about fast turnaround. May not be great for some autistic people, but also probably not great for a lot of others. But kind of understandable. But too many elements of the world don't seem designed with people in mind, full stop.

The world simply must continue to operate in a uniform fashion for the majority.

If it doesn't, the world descends into utter chaos (which it kind of is on its way in the UK)

It translates to:
Person with mental health problems "I need extra time for my exams "

Person with ADHD: "I need frequent breaks during my exams"

Person with autism : "I need to be isolated in my own room for my exams"

Person who prayers frequently : "I need a break from my exams to pray "

And it goes on and on.

Until you get 28 out of a class of 35 with various special treatments and the gullible 7 who struggle on and play by the rules (whilst getting ignored ) who eventually will think "fuck this, What's the point. Might as well say I've got anxiety"

(I've suffered with my mental health. Very likely have undiagnosed ADHD - but I never expect the world to adapt to me) i have no choice but to adapt to the world. It'd be ludicrous to think the world owes me anything.

Reasonable adjustments are very much warranted in a civilised society. But the clue is in the name: reasonable.

I am NT but one thing i do notice about the world is that very little consideration seems to be given to people who struggle to tolerate noise. Its not so much the volume but the echoing nature of large supermarkets etcetera. My local very upmarket cafe has just added a conservatory type building. Its beautiful, light, well designed, solar panels, comfortable seating but the chatter in it echoes quite horribly. I think that it would have only needed some noise reduction panels over the roof interior to reduce it a lot but no one seems to have thought of it.

I often talk about 'clatter'. I dont like clatter in a cafe or restaurant, I'll walk out if theres too much of it, bloody cutlery banging on tables and the clincking of cups echoing round the place, hate it

Yep, it is wrongly.

At least you admit it 👍

For those who addressed my point

I agree there's a difference in terms of being able to cope by masking and actually being unable to cope.

But my point is this - how have we ended up with a world designed in a way that so many people hate? How many people can you find that actually like open plan offices for example?

I genuinely wonder if some of the general rage we see in the population is an inability to cope with how things are set up

Let's use Euston station as an example. It took years for somebody to undo the idiocy that was the removal of train time notice boards (which were replaced with flashing ads)

There were staff objecting to it, there were passengers objecting to it. No responses for ages. It's like everybody's following the whim of one person. And who is the person behind the curtain?

I have worked in two places that went to open plan and sitting in meetings, allegedly designed to hear the concerns of staff, was absolutely painful. I would rather the bosses had just said "this is what we're doing, shut up or ship out". As it was, their nonsultation meetings just wasted everybody's time.

Sorry, I could bore on for ages with examples. It's like the current trend for every company to start using tech that absolutely everyone hates and doesn't work. Post Office horizon scandal is a really good example.

what I find with these conversations is that it's often assumes that society is set up for a majority. I actually don't think it is. At this point I have no idea who is being served by the majority of anything. It's really bizarre.

which kids actually like the way school is set up? There are loads of kids who have issues with the uniform. I still have marks on my skin from all the eczema it gave me.

Actually, I can't think about it for too long. I'll go mad. I probably did go quite mad sometime ago!

My first chore as a child was putting cutlery away. I volunteered. Because my parents made so much bloody noise doing it! 😂

I hate it too. I startle easy and it makes me feel irritated and headachey .... But.... You get on with it don't you ? 'suck it up' as we used to do back before we all became "me me me". We've all got sweet FA resilience and coping skills anymore.

I would say the recruitment process for the majority of jobs favours NT people and disadvantages ND candidates. Expectations of quick information processing to answer questions on the spot, group activities, interaction and confidence with an interviewer will all be challenging for those with social communication difficulties.

Same - I wear loops or AirPods in public now because otherwise the overwhelming noise and clatter is physically painful for me.

Yeah , sure. Everyone is a snowflake and putting it on, except for you.

I did not say that.

You have completely misinterpreted my point.

But people like you usually do that don't you ? So I'm not surprised one iota. I suppose I'm 'racist' too ? 🙄

Mymum is a bloody nightmare for things like this, she stirs tea like she's some sort of industrial cement mixer gone demented, clang clang clang clang against the cup, round and round she goes. Awful. Its a massive joke in our house

The point is that lots of ND people cannot cope. I can’t go and do a supermarket shop. I can’t sit in a noisy restaurant. Because it is so overwhelming for me that I shut down.

Luckily I can wear aids (Loops) to help me but often I don’t like to as it makes me stick out and people judge me or laugh at me.

Society doesn’t need to do much to adapt to people with disabilities like autism. A bit of kindness would go a long way, as corny as that sounds.

Hi OP

I’m a late-diagnosed autistic woman. The most obvious example, for me, of the world being designed for NT people is lighting. I’m super sensitive to light but didn’t realise this until LEDs were invented. I always used to feel a bit odd in fluorescent lighting but LED is unbearable for me.

I can see every flicker of the bloody things, and they operate on a frequency / level that literally makes my eyes spin in my head (honestly my eyes can’t focus) and I feel like I’m going to throw up. I have to wear sunglasses indoors, or anti-blue-light glasses, including when using my phone or laptop.

I have old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs in my house, but they’re expensive and increasingly difficult to source. Loads of the so-called incandescent bulbs on Amazon are actually LED. Don’t get me started on the LED headlights / brake lights in cars. I can’t drive at night any more as I cannot see due to the blinding sickening glare, and why people feel it necessary to have their lights on in daytime is beyond me. A simple trip to the shops can leave me recovering in a dark room for hours afterwards. I even wear special glasses to watch TV as - guess what - TVs are LED too these days.

I work in a school! Flickering lights everywhere. As an adaptation I have dimmable non-LEDs in my office. But I don’t spend all day in my office so I have to suffer. I’m the weird mad woman who’s always wearing dark glasses indoors!