what we're talking about. So we, you know, I noticed that the language is still evolving. And I think lots of people are coming from that from different places in this conference in this conference so far. So I just want to say that for me, the word neuro diversity is applying to the whole of the human species. And when I'm talking about neuro minorities, I tend to be talking about these conditions dyscalculia, dyslexia, ADHD, autistic spectrum condition, and we can also have mental health and acquired neuro diversity within that spectrum, because it's part of normal experience of being a human, though neuro typical, neurotypical, typical ism exists, but all of these things exist alongside neurotypical ism within the neuro diversity spectrum. And I particularly like this Venn diagram, please feel free to reuse it just always reference me and Mary, Callie, Mary Callie wrote the original version of this, but it was all of the all of the deficits. So she did a Venn diagram which I loved showing all of the Oh Relax. But she focused on all of the things which were problematic and associated with those various labels. And so I wrote one that was associated with all of the things that are positive associated with those, then a full list of the skills associated with various conditions is in the reference that's on the bottom left hand corner. So that's what we're talking about. So neuro minorities in terms of the workplace, and in terms of our modern systems, we started talking about neuro minorities around the around the 19th, to 20th century. So neuro minority as a thing, as kind of kept up with industrialization, when we became industrialized as our societies, we started noticing that not everybody could fit into that modern structure of how to work and learn. We started talking about things called Word blindness, which is what we used to call dyslexia. And the idea that some people just were blind to words, this very odd thing. What we didn't do is ask ourselves, is it normal to use 2d symbols to communicate? And actually, other people that are blind at least using 2d symbols to communicate, label to communicate using verbal comp, comprehension or body language or song? I mean, obviously, yes. So what we did is we started pathologizing people by the ways in which they couldn't fit in to our industrialized norms that as the industrialized norm became more and more fixed, so did the way that we were categorizing people that didn't fit into that their hyperkinetic child is one that can't sit still, for six hours a day, and nobody's going normal to sit down for six hours a day. Is that a normal thing? Is it well do we need to expect that of everybody. And then as we went into the mid to late 20th century, we got, we got clever about what we were calling people, we were still labeling people by the things that they couldn't do in relation to our industrialized norms. But we were, you know, we were making up lots and lots of science about it. One of the papers that I'm just in the middle of writing and publishing is a kind of look at the evidence base around all of these, these these these different conditions, with very excited about putting people into brain scanners and finding the bits that are broken, basically, that 62% of neurodiversity research is, is some form of neuro imaging, let's find the bits of the brain that are broken. We're assuming that if people don't fit into the industrialized norm, that they must be broken. And so we're looking for those broken bits. And that's when we get sort of more particular about talking about, you know, attention hyperactivity deficits, autism, and dyspraxia turning into developmental coordination disorder, and we're kind of you know, moving the language around a lot, but it's still very focused on on negatives. But what we're just at the cusp of right now in research, and it's really quite an exciting time to be in this field of research is just at the cusp of going well, actually, no, actually no, why is it normal for people to only communicate using 2d strings of symbols to only communicate whilst sitting down and utterly century out? And also, why is it normal for people to have to communicate in loud busy environments, and we're starting to realize that the social model of neuro diversity, and mirror minority is a thing. And we're starting to catch up with that in our research. So now in the 21st century, we talk about neuro diversity neuro divergence, neuro minority, we're looking at the brain in a slightly different way. So instead of trying to find locations of pieces that may be not quite working right or working differently, we're now kind of understanding the role of communication across a brain regions. The role of neurotransmitters like dopamine, noradrenaline, cortisol, and actually some of the most contemporary brain imaging studies are indicating that there's very, very little difference between what a what an ADHD and an autistic brain look like. And actually all of these things that we are currently calling conditions might be sort of symptom clusters. And within a neurological picture that is less about this bit doesn't work. And that bit doesn't work and is more about hypersensitivity. overspeed brains that are over sensitive brains that are under sensitive brains that are hyper connected brains that are less well connected. So we are in a massive flux of how we understand neurodiversity. And that's going to affect the way we do inclusion of work. And it's going to it's actually part of a huge paradigm shift around the way that we work and live anyway. So the other thing that I want to draw your attention to before we go into thinking about inclusion. So yeah, so just to summarize that point, and we've moving on from looking for things for things that are broken, and we're starting to understand that actually, the systems of normality that we've set are inflexible and we everyone has to stick to those might be the things that are odd, not necessarily the brains that don't quite work well in that environment. One of the most fascinating pieces of research that I ever came across was an imaging study, where they looked at Chinese dyslexic brains and English speaking dyslexic brains. And they found that completely different parts of the brain were implicated. Because of course they are, because you need completely different parts of the brain to process the Chinese language to the English language. One is an almost exclusively visual structure. And one is sort of quite badly phonetic. And by badly phonetic, I mean, let's just think about the word phonetic and the letter F. Not quite right as it. So you know, that's where we've got this thing around, you know, actually, we've got a certain type of brain that doesn't fit into a certain type of structure around it. So we're looking much more at the structures. And when we start to look much more structures in which neurodiversity sits, as well as kind of being in this switch between the medical model and the social model, understanding, as well as looking at misdiagnosis and how overlap between conditions is actually the norm, not the exception. And autistic people are very likely to have traits that are associated with developmental coordination disorder. And actually, lots of around 60% of people with Tourette Syndrome also are clinically diagnosed with ADHD. So we've got all of these different overlaps. And what are we actually talking about here. So that's one thing that's happening, there's a sort of, you know, overlapping influences within the field. But we've also really started to get better about our understanding of gender, and how race and ethnicity affect diagnosis rates. And I was so so pleased to see that the session yesterday, if you didn't see it, you absolutely have to catch up on video, when it comes out in a few weeks time. It was phenomenal. It was such a deep understanding of how people of color people from communities marginalized by color, and race, and poverty are missing diagnosed. diagnosis. And I think that's a really, really important point. Because what it means is that having a diagnosis of a neuro minority condition is a diagnosis of privilege. So people who already have privilege are getting the diagnosis, people who do not have privilege are not getting the diagnosis. And this obviously affects gender as well. And it can affect both. So when we come to think of levels of inclusion, that you're operating in society right now, we start with the idea of exclusion. And lots of people spoke yesterday about this about the employment rates for autistic people, the employment about the Disability Employment gap in general. And we know that we have a huge current picture of exclusion, we are currently living in an exclusive society, something or somewhere around the region of 25 to 50% of the prison population have ADHD. And depending on which country are in, there aren't enough good studies of how many of the of how much of the prison population also would classify as as autistic. But we're getting there. And at least 50% of the prison population are illiterate. So we know that exclusion is the norm. And we know that that exclusion is reinforced by intersectional, structural forces that will have affected whether or not you've got diagnosed or whether or not you actually just got told you how to conduct disorder, or an anxiety disorder, or whether your behavior was assumed to be willful, and some sort of moral character deficit, as opposed to a cognitive difference that was your ability to communicate, concentrate or learn. That's it. That's it that I mean that To be honest, I'm still there, I'm still in that space of working in that space. You know, 50 50% of what genius within does, is around improving employment outcomes for people who are marginalized and from marginalized communities. And we do a really good job of that, you know, we break all the all of the contract targets for how many people were supposed to be getting into work. But until we've changed the system around that, that job is not going anywhere. So the next level of inclusion is the kind of compliance level it's when people are aware that there are some legal things that they have to do differently. So we're aware that we've got these school and work systems that are demanding a very specific type of communication. And what we're saying is if you don't fit into that specific type of communication, we will make an allowance for you. We know we have to because you have a disabling condition. So we know we have to make an allowance for you. We'll make an accommodation or an adjustment. We might let you have some assistive technology. We might let you have a bit of coaching. We We might let you come late or avoid rush hour, we might let you do a bit of flexible working. But what we're not going to do is change our systems. So we're assuming that the systems are fixed, and that the individual can be flexible around this, I'm supporting a friend with them an educational plan for her autistic child. And the, their plan was written about kind of, you know, the teachers have to make sure he doesn't have sensory overwhelm. And it's like, right, well, how are they actually going to do that? in a class of 30? People? Well, he has to learn how to cope with those environments. Does he? Does he chili as an adult? Is he going to have to put himself in those environments for the whole of his working week? No, he is not. But the idea that you could let a child not come into school, does not compute, does not compute. So that the compliance level is when we fix, we fix the problem around the individual. And we don't look at ourselves. This is what we're doing at the moment. It I think we're doing deliberate inclusion. And I think what neuro diversity at work movements have done so far is, is excellent. So this is this is the paradigm shift starting this is the beginning of the autism at work program, where instead of saying, right, well, we can see you a little bit broken. So we'll help you with the broken things. We said, Oh, okay, oh, there might be some benefits to having a neuro minority condition, or some people have really good strengths, that have neuro minority conditions, I wonder if we could sort of, you know, deliberately bring in people who have those things would be awesome. Let's do that. And so then we've got these kind of deliberate inclusion programs. But we're still kind of keeping people segregated from the rest of the business. It's not full inclusion yet. And I will explain more about that. And I think when we where we should be heading and what we all should be focused on as a community is how do we get systemic inclusion for all the neuro neuro diversity movement doesn't stand alone, it's not the only thing changing about our society right now. Technology is changing the way that we live, work, and communicate and learn. And the pandemic has changed a whole bunch of stuff, our financial systems are in flux are our systems of professional status are in flux, there's more universal access to knowledge than there has ever been before. The lots of our systems are breaking down. And as we're breaking and remaking these systems, how can we build them so that there is inclusion for all and we don't have to make a special request if we need something slightly different.