Since being promoted to the position of 'Chief Operating Officer & EDI Project Officer', which is quite the mouthful, I've dedicated some time to exploring ways we can continue to follow and build on best practice around Inclusivity. This aligns with our company values and our commitments as a Disability Confident Leader.
Recently, we have joined several inclusivity-focused business forums such as Neurodiversity in Business and, more critically for this blog post, the Autistica Network.
On Thursday 25/07/2024 at approximately 12:00 BST, you would have found me in our office meeting room attending an Autistica webinar, where the Neu Insights team launched their e-learning platform. Their clear dedication to creating a research-backed and digitally inclusive e-learning platform interested me, especially one led by lived experience.
Before the end of the webinar I had already created an account, likely one of the first ever to do so, and was already working my way through their 'An Introduction to Neurodiversity' course. This served as an excellent whistle-stop tour of neurodiversity, taking time to properly define its terms and explain everything very concisely and clearly. The amount of ground covered in an easily digestible 10-minute course is impressive and dwarfs any other EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) training I've engaged with. We have already implemented this online course into our New Starter Training for all Jamescape staff!
Their second course, 'Sensory-Inclusive Spaces for Autistic People', dives further into a specific area of neurodiversity, covering sensory input in different public environments. This training has given us some considerations to help us ensure that our new office space and meeting room is as physically inclusive as possible.
The platform itself is very intuitive and easy to navigate, with a focus on accessibility. All graphics have been designed by the Neu Insight team to be inclusive from a race, gender and disability perspective. Each page has an audio version - which is a human recording, rather than text-to-speech software - which stood out to me as an example of how the team went above and beyond.
We highly recommend the courses on the Neu Insight Training website and believe it’s a great addition to your organisation's staff training programme. We look forward to future courses from the Neu Insight team, but until then, if you'd like to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest and greatest in inclusivity, then please drop us a line and we can have a chat about supporting your organisation.