התמלול המלא של 2020 Disability Lecture: #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut

previously obtained a research council funded MSc at Hertford 62 00:04:53,310 --> 00:04:56,810 as well as an LLB at the University of Edinburgh. 63 00:04:56,810 --> 00:05:03,789 Kate has been a Visiting Student at the Faculty of Law in the University of Copenhagen and 64 00:05:03,789 --> 00:05:10,309 was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the Faculty of Law in the University of Melbourne. 65 00:05:10,309 --> 00:05:18,189 In this lecture, Kate, a neurodivergent autistic and dyslexic student turned academic, will 66 00:05:18,189 --> 00:05:25,520 use the social model of disability to frame the different and myriad ways in which the 67 00:05:25,520 --> 00:05:28,830 neurotypical University disables students and academics. 68 00:05:28,830 --> 00:05:36,330 Borrowing the viral hash tag #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut, created by Queer and Deaf activist Christine 69 00:05:36,330 --> 00:05:44,360 Marshall, Kate will draw on her own and others’ lived experience, to reflect on one of the 70 00:05:44,360 --> 00:05:50,499 neurotypical university’s most profound and still too common disabling effect: dropping 71 00:05:50,499 --> 00:05:51,499 out. 72 00:05:51,499 --> 00:05:52,650 Please join me in welcoming Kate West. 73 00:05:52,650 --> 00:05:57,379 Over to you, Kate. 74 00:05:57,379 --> 00:06:10,650 DR KATE WEST: Hi everyone, I am just checking that you can 75 00:06:10,650 --> 00:06:13,550 hear me. 76 00:06:13,550 --> 00:06:28,279 Hi everyone, good evening, I am hoping you can hear me, I am guessing you can see me 77 00:06:28,279 --> 00:06:30,099 because my camera has started. 78 00:06:30,099 --> 00:06:33,340 Great, fantastic that’s amazing, thank you. 79 00:06:33,340 --> 00:06:38,930 I am certainly no expert at Zoom webinars, so you’ll have to bear with me while I participate 80 00:06:38,930 --> 00:06:41,569 in my first ever one. 81 00:06:41,569 --> 00:06:45,740 So I'm just going to start by sharing the slides and then I will get going with the 82 00:06:45,740 --> 00:06:46,740 talk. 83 00:06:46,740 --> 00:06:51,039 So bear with me while I share my screen. 84 00:06:51,039 --> 00:07:07,749 OK, so, now you should be able to see the power point. 85 00:07:07,749 --> 00:07:12,330 I am just going to put it into slideshow function. 86 00:07:12,330 --> 00:07:16,119 Talking aloud actually helps me go through these motions, so thanks for bearing with 87 00:07:16,119 --> 00:07:17,119 me. 88 00:07:17,119 --> 00:07:21,559 OK, so, current slide… 89 00:07:21,559 --> 00:07:25,719 Great, we can begin. 90 00:07:25,719 --> 00:07:30,389 I would like to start with a content warning. 91 00:07:30,389 --> 00:07:35,580 I know that there will be many people watching this who may be nervous about what is going 92 00:07:35,580 --> 00:07:41,889 to come up in terms of if whether the content might be triggering for them, especially because 93 00:07:41,889 --> 00:07:50,210 it tackles a topic, a difficult topic for those of us who identify as disabled or who 94 00:07:50,210 --> 00:07:52,399 identify

as having a disability. 95 00:07:52,399 --> 00:07:58,110 So broadly speaking, I am going to be speaking about disablism, I am also going to be speaking 96 00:07:58,110 --> 00:08:02,129 about what’s called and I will explain what this is in a moment when I get into the talk, 97 00:08:02,129 --> 00:08:05,469 because I’m aware there may be people in the audience who don’t know what this is, 98 00:08:05,469 --> 00:08:10,789 but I will be talking about the medical model of disability as well, and finally, I’m 99 00:08:10,789 --> 00:08:13,690 going to be talking about bullying and harassment. 100 00:08:13,690 --> 00:08:18,669 If I get onto those topics, I’ll try and flag them up, and if you want to mute your 101 00:08:18,669 --> 00:08:22,050 microphone or take some time out, then that’s fine. 102 00:08:22,050 --> 00:08:27,419 Just in terms of how I’m going to present: I’m actually going to read the alt-text, 103 00:08:27,419 --> 00:08:35,490 the alternative text that visually describes what I’m showing in the slide, for unsighted 104 00:08:35,490 --> 00:08:38,650 or partially sighted audience members. 105 00:08:38,650 --> 00:08:44,100 So I’m just going to start by really describing the first slide. 106 00:08:44,100 --> 00:08:47,832 And also just to manage your expectations – as an autistic person, I like to have 107 00:08:47,832 --> 00:08:55,870 my expectations managed – there are fourteen slides, so you can get a sense of how far 108 00:08:55,870 --> 00:09:00,840 we are along with the lecture. 109 00:09:00,840 --> 00:09:02,980 OK. 110 00:09:02,980 --> 00:09:08,830 I’m just going to bring up the chat box so I can make sure I’m not just going off 111 00:09:08,830 --> 00:09:12,100 on a whim and somebody’s trying to tell me something. 112 00:09:12,100 --> 00:09:15,830 I can find it… where is it.. 113 00:09:15,830 --> 00:09:21,220 OK, here we go. 114 00:09:21,220 --> 00:09:27,510 OK, so Slide 1 of 14 is the title slide of the lecture. 115 00:09:27,510 --> 00:09:30,060 There’s a backdrop of candy pink. 116 00:09:30,060 --> 00:09:32,370 It’s overlaid with a blue triangle. 117 00:09:32,370 --> 00:09:37,150 It’s offset to the right to leave a strip of pink running down the left-hand side from 118 00:09:37,150 --> 00:09:38,570 top to bottom. 119 00:09:38,570 --> 00:09:45,020 It reads, ‘The University of Oxford Disability Lecture 2020’, below which it reads my name, 120 00:09:45,020 --> 00:09:50,520 Dr Kate West, my job title, Senior Lecturer in Visual Criminology, and my place of employment, 121 00:09:50,520 --> 00:09:51,520 Oxford Brookes University. 122 00:09:51,520 --> 00:09:56,950 For those of you who don’t know, Oxford Brookes University is the other University 123 00:09:56,950 --> 00:09:58,410 in the city of Oxford. 124 00:09:58,410 --> 00:10:05,060 There are two universities here, so although I am a graduate of the older university, I 125 00:10:05,060 --> 00:10:10,270 am now a very proud faculty member at the newer University. 126 00:10:10,270 --> 00:10:13,580 So the title of the lecture is ‘#WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut’. 127 00:10:13,580 --> 00:10:21,920 This sits at the top of the blue square, and under that, the subtitle reads ‘A Neurodivergent 128 00:10:21,920 --> 00:10:23,220 Student-Turned-Academic’. 129 00:10:23,220 --> 00:10:29,870 Finally, the Oxford Brookes logo and the Oxford University logos are in the bottom right-hand 130 00:10:29,870 --> 00:10:30,870 corner. 131 00:10:30,870 --> 00:10:34,380 Just a word about speaking to you as well: I haven't quite worked out whether I’m going 132 00:10:34,380 --> 00:10:40,900 to look at what I have thought to myself as theoretically a thousand eyes – so this 133 00:10:40,900 --> 00:10:43,550 camera that is looking at me. 134 00:10:43,550 --> 00:10:49,460 One thing about my being autistic, at least, is that my preference is not to look at people 135 00:10:49,460 --> 00:10:50,460 in the eye. 136 00:10:50,460 --> 00:10:56,170 Of course I’ve spent my life masking, of course, so I’ll do it. 137 00:10:56,170 --> 00:10:57,220 I’ll try. 138 00:10:57,220 --> 00:11:04,360 I will expend some energy doing that for the neurotypicals, although I should really stop 139 00:11:04,360 --> 00:11:05,440 doing that! 140 00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:11,320 OK, so to get going with the talk: moving onto the next slide, briefly describing it 141 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:19,510 visually, it shows two images side-by-side, of two villages in Scotland's north-east coast: 142 00:11:19,510 --> 00:11:23,190 Sinine is on the left and Crovey is on the right. 143 00:11:23,190 --> 00:11:28,190 The north-facing gable ends of approximately thirty buildings in each village – they’re 144 00:11:28,190 --> 00:11:33,360 roughly the same size – hug the harbours, while the south- gables face or are built 145 00:11:33,360 --> 00:11:36,350 into the cliffs and hillside. 146 00:11:36,350 --> 00:11:41,860 I was 17 the first time I dropped out. 147 00:11:41,860 --> 00:11:47,820 I was about a third of the way through the equivalent of the second year of sixth form 148 00:11:47,820 --> 00:11:54,920 England and Wales and Northern Ireland, at a large low-performing co-educational state 149 00:11:54,920 --> 00:12:00,500 secondary school, five hours north-east of the border between England and Scotland. 150 00:12:00,500 --> 00:12:07,160 Its catchment was 33 miles long, along the north-facing Moray Firth coast, drawing a 151 00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:13,690 predominantly rural and industrial working class, fishing and faming working class, cohort 152 00:12:13,690 --> 00:12:19,630 into its student body. 153 00:12:19,630 --> 00:12:22,250 These villages are characteristic of the Moray Firth coast. 154 00:12:22,250 --> 00:12:26,790 They’re historic Highland Clearance settlements, and they scatter the whole catchment of the 155 00:12:26,790 --> 00:12:28,790 school area that I’m from. 156 00:12:28,790 --> 00:12:34,750 The village on the right, Crovey, is near Gardenstown, which is where my family is from. 157

00:12:34,750 --> 00:12:44,310 The third slide of 14: it shows two cover art works side by side. 158 00:12:44,310 --> 00:12:48,150 On the left is Robin Jenkins' The Cone Gatherers. 159 00:12:48,150 --> 00:12:53,830 It features a mid-twentieth century grenade with a military green body, silver fuse. 160 00:12:53,830 --> 00:12:58,720 On the right is Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song. 161 00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:00,800 It features a yellow ochre sun at its centre. 162 00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:06,150 It’s surrounded by wheat and thistles, and the landscape below is comprised of scorched 163 00:13:06,150 --> 00:13:09,060 brown hillside and a green and red field. 164 00:13:09,060 --> 00:13:13,920 A labourer can be seen working the plough behind their horse. 165 00:13:13,920 --> 00:13:19,860 I dropped out when I was assigned Thomas Hardy's late 19th century novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. 166 00:13:19,860 --> 00:13:26,490 I’d of course been assigned novels throughout my secondary education, including the ones 167 00:13:26,490 --> 00:13:32,620 that I spoke about on the slide, but I’d never actually read a novel by the time I 168 00:13:32,620 --> 00:13:35,060 was 17. 169 00:13:35,060 --> 00:13:41,510 I didn't know it then, but I was dyslexic, attention deficit disordered and autistic. 170 00:13:41,510 --> 00:13:47,750 Pre-Hardy, as I’ll call that stage of my life, my go-around, my coping strategy, as 171 00:13:47,750 --> 00:13:53,260 neurotypicals call it, was to learn about assigned prose through consolidated teaching, 172 00:13:53,260 --> 00:14:01,840 the kind of special close teaching that was on offer in the earlier stages that pre-date 173 00:14:01,840 --> 00:14:04,530 the equivalent of A-levels in England. 174 00:14:04,530 --> 00:14:12,980 So I had kind of developed these coping strategies; and specifically, I’d learn, for example, 175 00:14:12,980 --> 00:14:18,660 the lesson about a discrete passage, so I could take it and apply it to different contexts. 176 00:14:18,660 --> 00:14:20,990 It’s something I tell my students now. 177 00:14:20,990 --> 00:14:26,490 It’s not necessarily the content that matters when I’m teaching you: it’s the lesson 178 00:14:26,490 --> 00:14:30,040 that can be derived from the content, so that you can apply that lesson to other contexts. 179 00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:34,040 So I was doing that throughout my schooling. 180 00:14:34,040 --> 00:14:40,360 So by then, I have developed what neurotypicals call, as I just said, coping mechanisms: but 181 00:14:40,360 --> 00:14:51,300 I like to think of these as formidably dynamic resistance strategies to neurotypical teaching 182 00:14:51,300 --> 00:14:52,300 and learning. 183 00:14:52,300 --> 00:14:56,210 But resistance was futile, to use that social script that neurotypicals use: in the face 184 00:14:56,210 --> 00:14:57,270 of Hardy. 185 00:14:57,270 --> 00:15:03,050 By then I was in the equivalent of my A-level year; consolidated teaching has ended, and 186 00:15:03,050 --> 00:15:08,160 I could no longer camouflage by pretending I could read when I couldn't. 187 00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:13,600 Class sizes had diminished from 30 to 5, and I could no longer hide physically either. 188 00:15:13,600 --> 00:15:14,600 What did I do? 189 00:15:14,600 --> 00:15:18,800 I dropped out. 190 00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:25,930 My being undiagnosed as a dyslexic, attention deficit disordered and autistic student met 191 00:15:25,930 --> 00:15:31,830 with my first-generation student status – first-generation meaning here that, with my two brothers, I 192 00:15:31,830 --> 00:15:38,490 was part of the first generation of my industrial working class family to go to university. 193 00:15:38,490 --> 00:15:42,980 First-generation students enter university for utilitarian, that is, kind of instrumental 194 00:15:42,980 --> 00:15:44,590 reasons. 195 00:15:44,590 --> 00:15:50,700 I entered university for a vocation, specifically to practise law, not for an education. 196 00:15:50,700 --> 00:15:54,000 I stumbled on the latter, thank goodness. 197 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:57,230 I didn't ask my teachers for help then. 198 00:15:57,230 --> 00:16:03,940 I didn’t ask them for help to read, because I didn’t need an education, or so I thought. 199 00:16:03,940 --> 00:16:11,090 A footnote here is that in Scottish secondary education, University entrants, can theoretically, 200 00:16:11,090 --> 00:16:17,320 like myself, hold unconditional offers to University at 17 years old, because we do 201 00:16:17,320 --> 00:16:23,740 our entrance exams for university before the A-level. 202 00:16:23,740 --> 00:16:31,060 So I was actually holding several unconditional offers to my universities of choice in Scotland, 203 00:16:31,060 --> 00:16:38,770 and England was never a consideration, of course: for those outside the UK, home students 204 00:16:38,770 --> 00:16:43,779 in Scotland, we don’t pay tuition fees, so it would never have crossed my mind to 205 00:16:43,779 --> 00:16:46,960 study in England. 206 00:16:46,960 --> 00:16:51,800 In terms of this dropping out, I do know it then, but, … 207 00:16:51,800 --> 00:16:54,190 (Just making sure you're still with me! 208 00:16:54,190 --> 00:16:57,880 It’s quite strange doing this because you kind of feel like you might be speaking with 209 00:16:57,880 --> 00:16:58,880 yourself. 210 00:16:58,880 --> 00:17:02,080 I’m not speaking with myself… 211 00:17:02,080 --> 00:17:07,809 Yes, great, thank you, Lydia Townsend, thank you! 212 00:17:07,809 --> 00:17:10,839 OK, I’m going back in. 213 00:17:10,839 --> 00:17:14,059 That will be the last time I do it, I'm confident now!) 214 00:17:14,059 --> 00:17:18,900 I didn’t know it but this would be the first of two calendar year long intermissions during 215 00:17:18,900 --> 00:17:26,860 my undergraduate degree; possibly more than a handful of intermissions totalling three 216 00:17:26,860 --> 00:17:34,040 academic years during my doctoral degree, and finally post-student life, an

almost intermission 217 00:17:34,040 --> 00:17:37,180 last year from my career. 218 00:17:37,180 --> 00:17:43,400 It was with each additional intermission, or dropout, and most of all that latter example, 219 00:17:43,400 --> 00:17:53,309 precisely because I had worked so hard to begin my academic career, that I started to 220 00:17:53,309 --> 00:17:59,110 feel quite strongly that this was continuing to happen. 221 00:17:59,110 --> 00:18:03,900 And I stopped thinking at this point of my dropouts as personal failures, results of 222 00:18:03,900 --> 00:18:10,420 my impairments and my deficits, as the medical model of disability would tell me. 223 00:18:10,420 --> 00:18:15,890 And instead I saw them for what I truly think they are, namely the effect of structural 224 00:18:15,890 --> 00:18:17,910 disableism. 225 00:18:17,910 --> 00:18:23,740 In this lecture, then, I’m going to weave the ways in which what I call the neurotypical 226 00:18:23,740 --> 00:18:28,410 University, that is, a University not designed for neurodivergent students. 227 00:18:28,410 --> 00:18:33,660 When I say neurodivergent, historically at least, that has pertained to autists, but 228 00:18:33,660 --> 00:18:42,480 also now the paradigm or way of thinking has expanded to include dyslexia, dyspraxia, attention 229 00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:45,230 deficit disorder, Tourette's and so on. 230 00:18:45,230 --> 00:18:51,940 So it’s a much broader way of thinking about neurological diversity now. 231 00:18:51,940 --> 00:18:57,660 So this is not a place that’s designed for people like me and, I’m sure, many people 232 00:18:57,660 --> 00:19:00,120 who are watching. 233 00:19:00,120 --> 00:19:05,230 So I’m going to be, as I’ve said, weaving some of my lived experiences – sometimes 234 00:19:05,230 --> 00:19:11,840 anonymously, to protect mine and others’ identities, through participant lived experiences, 235 00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:21,600 again sometimes anonymous, depending on what participants wished for. 236 00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:22,742 OK, next slide. 237 00:19:22,742 --> 00:19:29,180 Slide 4 of 14, it features a title noting that in the UK, and just to note, this is 238 00:19:29,180 --> 00:19:39,150 a figure about home students, UK students in universities in the UK. 16.2% of students 239 00:19:39,150 --> 00:19:40,250 report disabilities. 240 00:19:40,250 --> 00:19:46,480 For a disability to be recorded it has to be reported in the first instance. 241 00:19:46,480 --> 00:19:51,210 Under the title, there is a table adapted from Hubble and Bolton 2020, which breaks 242 00:19:51,210 --> 00:19:55,780 down the types of disabilities that students in the UK report. 243 00:19:55,780 --> 00:20:00,920 Specific learning difficulty is highlighted in blue, because I am trying to highlight 244 00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:03,380 neurodivergent disabilities. 245 00:20:03,380 --> 00:20:10,570 And so is quote, ‘social communication / autism spectrum disorder’, close quote. 246 00:20:10,570 --> 00:20:15,930

You know, I say that in jest, but sometimes I am using the medical language, and some 247 00:20:15,930 --> 00:20:19,050 of us will find that quite oppressive, so I think it’s important to highlight that 248 00:20:19,050 --> 00:20:24,309 I am using the language that’s on the table: it might not be my own choice. 249 00:20:24,309 --> 00:20:26,380 So I’m just highlighting these. 250 00:20:26,380 --> 00:20:41,311 So of that 16%, the slide describes how there are 5.2% of the 100% of the disabled student 251 00:20:41,311 --> 00:20:48,260 population in the UK, all levels, undergraduate through to PhD, doctoral level. 252 00:20:48,260 --> 00:20:53,420 5.2% report a specific learning difficulty. 253 00:20:53,420 --> 00:21:01,310 And 0.6, quite a small percentage, report autistic spectrum disorder or ASD. 254 00:21:01,310 --> 00:21:10,420 And I have highlighted in yellow as a point of interest, and that is just because, especially 255 00:21:10,420 --> 00:21:15,950 when it comes to neurodivergence, I am not just dyslexic for example, I am not just attention 256 00:21:15,950 --> 00:21:17,270 deficit disordered. 257 00:21:17,270 --> 00:21:21,320 The thing with neurodivergence is that often these disabilities are co-occurring. 258 00:21:21,320 --> 00:21:26,280 So for example, when I historically reported disability when I was a student, I would always 259 00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:33,590 tick two or more conditions, so I was not even being picked up into SpLD or into ASD, 260 00:21:33,590 --> 00:21:39,420 and certainly not ASD, because I am late diagnosed, so it was towards the end of my doctorate 261 00:21:39,420 --> 00:21:44,600 I discovered I was autistic, self-discovered before receiving a psychiatric diagnosis. 262 00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:52,320 And the reason why I’m highlighting these figures is because disabled students overall 263 00:21:52,320 --> 00:21:58,010 fare worse in higher education, without even considering intersectional data. 264 00:21:58,010 --> 00:22:02,360 So thinking for example about class, for example we know that first-generation students are 265 00:22:02,360 --> 00:22:04,270 more likely to drop out etc. 266 00:22:04,270 --> 00:22:06,760 And race, and gender. 267 00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:12,490 Disabled students are less likely to enter university in the first instance, less likely 268 00:22:12,490 --> 00:22:16,540 to continue university, and more likely to drop out. 269 00:22:16,540 --> 00:22:21,110 Where they do continue they take longer to graduate. 270 00:22:21,110 --> 00:22:30,210 This is really important, because they will inevitably incur extra costs, and one of the 271 00:22:30,210 --> 00:22:33,429 areas of organising that I have been involved in 272 00:22:33,429 --> 00:22:41,050 is specifically organising around continuation fees that are being charged to disabled students. 273 00:22:41,050 --> 00:22:48,520 And I’m working with my own university and with my former Colleges in this regard. 274 00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:54,390 I am not

going to speak about that in this talk, because I have spoken about it a lot 275 00:22:54,390 --> 00:22:55,390 elsewhere. 276 00:22:55,390 --> 00:22:58,910 In terms of the data on academics, because, you know, part of this for me, as I said, 277 00:22:58,910 --> 00:23:01,220 is not just about the student experience. 278 00:23:01,220 --> 00:23:07,660 I thought once I graduated and I became an academic, everything would be fine, because 279 00:23:07,660 --> 00:23:13,300 I thought this experience was unique, naively, unique to being a disabled student. 280 00:23:13,300 --> 00:23:14,720 It’s not. 281 00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:22,410 In fact, I found it more disabling to be an academic than a student in a neurotypical 282 00:23:22,410 --> 00:23:23,410 university. 283 00:23:23,410 --> 00:23:26,860 The data around disabled academics really is not readily available. 284 00:23:26,860 --> 00:23:35,420 So I am collecting it slowly, but some institutions I’ve got data back from, the numbers are 285 00:23:35,420 --> 00:23:40,140 so negligible and I think this says something about academics even reporting their disability 286 00:23:40,140 --> 00:23:44,480 in the first place., that they don’t record the data. 287 00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:49,540 So, that is an issue in itself. 288 00:23:49,540 --> 00:23:52,500 OK, let me just change the slide. 289 00:23:52,500 --> 00:23:57,460 Slide 5 of 14 shows two cover artworks from two books. 290 00:23:57,460 --> 00:24:03,470 On the left is ‘Disability Discourse’, edited by Mairian Corker and Sally French. 291 00:24:03,470 --> 00:24:08,910 And on the right is ‘Neurodiversity: the Birth of an Idea’, by Judy Singer. 292 00:24:08,910 --> 00:24:14,260 So on the left, ‘Disability Discourse is split kind of vertically from top to bottom 293 00:24:14,260 --> 00:24:19,220 into two colours, white and kind of like a neon green on the right. 294 00:24:19,220 --> 00:24:25,870 And the book by Judy Singer for me is really not very friendly for me as an autistic, anyway, 295 00:24:25,870 --> 00:24:32,690 it’s that awful white with a high contrast, blue title, blue author’s signature and 296 00:24:32,690 --> 00:24:37,620 so on, and there’s a word cloud in the middle that says words such as ‘neurodiversity, 297 00:24:37,620 --> 00:24:44,460 minority, inclusion, autistic, difference, diversity’, and so on. 298 00:24:44,460 --> 00:24:51,710 So the lecture is shaped by autistic sociologist Judy Singer's 1997 and 1998 neurodiversity 299 00:24:51,710 --> 00:24:55,679 way of thinking, or what academics would call ‘paradigm’, which (I think I’ve said 300 00:24:55,679 --> 00:25:00,650 that word about five times already, more to abuse!) as the name suggests celebrates the 301 00:25:00,650 --> 00:25:09,380 neurological diversity – quote, ‘diversity’, close quote – within our species, reframing 302 00:25:09,380 --> 00:25:15,179 autism in particular within the social model of disability that emerged in the UK in the 303 00:25:15,179 --> 00:25:17,240 1960s and grew through the 70s. 304 00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:22,960 However, more than two decades now after Singer coined this ground-breaking term and concept, 305 00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:27,790 and it’s done amazing work, I am now starting to be a little bit cautious about using the 306 00:25:27,790 --> 00:25:29,270 term itself. 307 00:25:29,270 --> 00:25:34,679 And this is a natural way that academic models develop, like they become sharper and more 308 00:25:34,679 --> 00:25:39,840 pointed as time progresses, and that is a good thing. 309 00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:48,340 So instead I tend not to use that word, because calling or describing someone, or something, 310 00:25:48,340 --> 00:25:55,380 an organisation like a university, for example, as ‘neurodiverse’ simply highlights neurological 311 00:25:55,380 --> 00:26:03,870 diversity without going as far as to highlight the character of the diversity. 312 00:26:03,870 --> 00:26:09,451 It is kind of amorphous, and nebulous, it is a bit of a kind of liberal surrogate, if 313 00:26:09,451 --> 00:26:15,870 you like, and kind of just sucks up all the difference. 314 00:26:15,870 --> 00:26:20,530 I'm not sure that makes sense, it does in my neurodivergent brain. 315 00:26:20,530 --> 00:26:27,309 So this has allowed me instead to talk about neurotypical social structures: so two social 316 00:26:27,309 --> 00:26:28,309 groups, neurotypicals and neurodivergents. 317 00:26:28,309 --> 00:26:34,460 And that’s really important to me, because it gives us the language – I’m not the 318 00:26:34,460 --> 00:26:40,200 first, lots of people, especially neurodivergent people, do this: we’re all speaking in that 319 00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:41,200 language. 320 00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:45,049 I notice that it now seems to be neurotypical people who tend to use the word ‘neurodiverse’ 321 00:26:45,049 --> 00:26:46,830 as an adjective or noun. 322 00:26:46,830 --> 00:26:52,890 But I think it is important to have these two social groups emphasised, because it allows 323 00:26:52,890 --> 00:26:59,010 me for example to talk about a neurotypical University: a university, the structure of 324 00:26:59,010 --> 00:27:04,519 which is for neurotypicals, to the exclusion of neurodivergence. 325 00:27:04,519 --> 00:27:10,100 And importantly then, it’s not about sneaking neurodivergents in through the back door in 326 00:27:10,100 --> 00:27:15,110 the neurotypical university because the social structure remains the same; it’s about dismantling 327 00:27:15,110 --> 00:27:20,280 the structures, to use a metaphor, don’t want to get too radical and pull the universities 328 00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:31,040 down, dismantling the neurotypical structures that perpetuate disabling neurodivergent students 329 00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:32,040 and academics. 330 00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:33,040 OK. 331 00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:37,990 Moving on, slide 6 of 14... 332 00:27:37,990 --> 00:27:42,140 (I am just going to check my time. 333 00:27:42,140 --> 00:27:46,540

We’re good, back in.) 334 00:27:46,540 --> 00:27:59,160 Slide 6 of 14 shows a screenshot of a tweet by Chrissy, rainbow emoji, clapperboard emoji, 335 00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:00,669 purple heart emoji. 336 00:28:00,669 --> 00:28:03,790 With the Twitter handle @EssentialSign_. 337 00:28:03,790 --> 00:28:09,010 The tweet has 439 retweets and 970 likes. 338 00:28:09,010 --> 00:28:13,270 I’m going to read out what the tweet says when I talk through the slide, so I won't 339 00:28:13,270 --> 00:28:16,820 read out the visual detail of the slide. 340 00:28:16,820 --> 00:28:24,140 And also I’d like to say I’m a sighted person, so this is new to me, so if there 341 00:28:24,140 --> 00:28:30,250 are things you want to call me in or out on, I really welcome that if I'm doing something 342 00:28:30,250 --> 00:28:32,120 wrong. 343 00:28:32,120 --> 00:28:38,440 So the hashtag #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut was created by Chrissy Marshall, a Deaf activist 344 00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:39,470 and student. 345 00:28:39,470 --> 00:28:48,700 In Marshall’s words, and this is what the tweet says, ‘#WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut was 346 00:28:48,700 --> 00:28:55,710 created to expose the frustration and challenges disabled students face daily in public institutions.’ 347 00:28:55,710 --> 00:29:02,780 They continue, ‘Becoming exhausted from advocating for yourself is valid af’ (I 348 00:29:02,780 --> 00:29:07,500 know there are children in the audience, so I will leave it at that) ‘and the educational 349 00:29:07,500 --> 00:29:11,171 system wasn't developed for disabled people to succeed’. 350 00:29:11,171 --> 00:29:16,320 So you can see here that again what Marshall is speaking about is that social model of 351 00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:23,049 disability, where the educational system is disabling people. 352 00:29:23,049 --> 00:29:31,650 So, if you are not familiar with Chrissy's work I would check it out, it is really important. 353 00:29:31,650 --> 00:29:38,380 They have actually gone viral on TikTok for an amazing TikTok video about deafness and 354 00:29:38,380 --> 00:29:43,210 access, and actually, and that video got 5.5 million views. 355 00:29:43,210 --> 00:29:49,299 It is to do with the #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut hashtag as well. 356 00:29:49,299 --> 00:29:54,120 So notice the language that Marshall uses, they use the word ‘disabled’ as a prefix 357 00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:58,130 for people and students as opposed to people or students ‘with disabilities’. 358 00:29:58,130 --> 00:30:02,620 This is how I and many others choose to identify. 359 00:30:02,620 --> 00:30:09,570 I am disabled because society disables me, and not because the medical model of disability 360 00:30:09,570 --> 00:30:16,360 tells me that I am somehow lacking, that I am impaired and that consequently I am in 361 00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:19,290 need of treatment. 362 00:30:19,290 --> 00:30:26,870 Relatedly then, it has allowed disabled people to share how outside factors nothing to do 363 00:30:26,870 --> 00:30:34,799 with themselves, outside factors beyond their control are excluding them, with the effect 364 00:30:34,799 --> 00:30:36,380 that they drop out. 365 00:30:36,380 --> 00:30:42,530 Slide 7 of 14 is a screenshot of a tweet. 366 00:30:42,530 --> 00:30:44,860 The author is Ellen Fraser Barbour. 367 00:30:44,860 --> 00:30:48,730 Thank you, Ellen, for participating and letting me share your tweet. 368 00:30:48,730 --> 00:30:50,750 Twitter handle is @ellenffb. 369 00:30:50,750 --> 00:30:52,650 It reads: ‘#WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut. 370 00:30:52,650 --> 00:30:59,440 What people don’t get is that for many of us with disability, it is not one experience 371 00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:05,039 leading to dropout: there’s a whole accumulation of internalised comments, belittling, low 372 00:31:05,039 --> 00:31:10,450 expectation, and discriminatory behaviour in education which goes way back’. 373 00:31:10,450 --> 00:31:13,309 The tweet has 21 retweets and 60 likes. 374 00:31:13,309 --> 00:31:22,110 The hundreds of tweets and sub- tweets to Marshall's viral hashtag by both students 375 00:31:22,110 --> 00:31:28,630 and academics illustrate the numerous and myriad reasons why disabled students and academics 376 00:31:28,630 --> 00:31:29,630 drop out. 377 00:31:29,630 --> 00:31:34,780 As PhD candidate who authored the tweet, PhD candidate Ellen Fraser Barbour highlights 378 00:31:34,780 --> 00:31:40,660 in her use of the hashtag, these are experienced simultaneously and cumulatively over long 379 00:31:40,660 --> 00:31:42,910 periods of time. 380 00:31:42,910 --> 00:31:48,960 And it is, as she puts it, accumulation of internalised comments, and I’ve just read 381 00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:56,470 that, the ‘belittling, low expectation, discriminatory behaviour in education which 382 00:31:56,470 --> 00:31:57,960 goes way back’. 383 00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:05,049 And you can see that that makes, moves me quite a lot.it will resonate with a lot of 384 00:32:05,049 --> 00:32:11,419 this audience, I am sure, and really since we were children, of course. 385 00:32:11,419 --> 00:32:13,880 OK. 386 00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:24,160 Others have spoken about how disabled academics, as teachers and colleagues, doubt their students 387 00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,810 and colleagues being disabled on some occasions. 388 00:32:27,810 --> 00:32:33,179 One student said they felt their neurodivergence was in question when their professor continually 389 00:32:33,179 --> 00:32:41,511 asked them ‘Why do you frame your experience through your dyslexia, autism etc.?’ – as 390 00:32:41,511 --> 00:32:47,270 though they could, to use the extremely online cultural idiom, cancel themselves. 391 00:32:47,270 --> 00:32:52,870 On other occasions the same student said that the same professor felt that the neurodivergent 392 00:32:52,870 --> 00:33:00,169 student was too autistic or too dyslexic to even continue in their programme, and suggested 393 00:33:00,169 --> 00:33:03,110 they drop out

themselves. 394 00:33:03,110 --> 00:33:07,400 When I asked that student how they fared in the end, they graduated almost at the very 395 00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:11,720 top of a cohort that was over 200 people strong. 396 00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:18,309 ‘Low expectation’, as Ellen Fraser Barbour said, indeed. 397 00:33:18,309 --> 00:33:26,470 OK, slide 8 of 14 is a grey scale but for a blue scroll and those kinds of ‘Help’ 398 00:33:26,470 --> 00:33:29,100 points you can click on at various points. 399 00:33:29,100 --> 00:33:39,030 It is a greyscale image of a piece of legislation familiar to many of us, the Equality Act, 400 00:33:39,030 --> 00:33:42,980 a section familiar to many of us, Section 20, The Duty to Make Adjustments. 401 00:33:42,980 --> 00:33:47,770 I’ve highlighted that in yellow just to draw attention to it. 402 00:33:47,770 --> 00:33:53,420 The Government crest is on the top left-hand corner and the National Archives logo is in 403 00:33:53,420 --> 00:33:55,030 the top right. 404 00:33:55,030 --> 00:34:02,400 When it comes to why we neurodivergent people drop out of the neurotypical University, I 405 00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:08,909 want to focus on one reason, time constraints but also, this gets to the heart of something 406 00:34:08,909 --> 00:34:15,240 I am trying to develop for my eventual book, as I call it. 407 00:34:15,240 --> 00:34:16,860 I want to focus on one reason. 408 00:34:16,860 --> 00:34:21,040 I always tell my students to avoid hyperbolic language, but I am going to excuse myself 409 00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:25,510 on this occasion, because I think it reflects the empirical reality qute well: what I call 410 00:34:25,510 --> 00:34:33,389 the vast chasm between the section 20 duty for HEIs, that is, Higher Education Institutions, 411 00:34:33,389 --> 00:34:39,679 and Government funders working in partnership to make adjustments for their disabled students, 412 00:34:39,679 --> 00:34:44,020 and academics in their employment under the Equality Act 2010. 413 00:34:44,020 --> 00:34:49,960 So this gap between that and what is happening on the ground to be a little bit sharper and 414 00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:56,250 more blunt about it, I want to talk about the failure of public sector organisations 415 00:34:56,250 --> 00:34:58,050 to implement the duty. 416 00:34:58,050 --> 00:35:04,400 It is mandated by law. 417 00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:08,930 This next slide I am aware it might be distressing, actually I will take it off for a second. 418 00:35:08,930 --> 00:35:13,830 The next slide might be distressing for people, it might give you sensory overload. 419 00:35:13,830 --> 00:35:21,150 So just to let you know that is coming up if you want to dim the screen etc., just you 420 00:35:21,150 --> 00:35:22,150 can hear my voice. 421 00:35:22,150 --> 00:35:27,440 But it is kinda designed that way on purpose to demonstrate what new words look like to 422 00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:30,369 me when I am reading as a dyslexic reader. 423 00:35:30,369 --> 00:35:33,560 So I'm just going to put that screen back up on the screen now. 424 00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:41,020 Slide 9 of 14 It is a series of dyslexic misspellings of the word ‘anachronism’. 425 00:35:41,020 --> 00:35:46,870 And I've included – these are my own dyslexic misspellings, by the way. 426 00:35:46,870 --> 00:35:51,470 I’ve included them left to right, and they kind of cover the whole page; it kind of makes 427 00:35:51,470 --> 00:35:55,570 it look like it’s endless and ongoing. 428 00:35:55,570 --> 00:35:59,760 Students have to provide evidence of their neurodivergence in order to access reasonable 429 00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,720 adjustments, a problem in itself. 430 00:36:02,720 --> 00:36:06,500 This is another theme in the wider #WhyDoDisabledPeopleDropOut hashtag. 431 00:36:06,500 --> 00:36:11,510 First, students have to at least suspect that they are neurodivergent. 432 00:36:11,510 --> 00:36:14,430 ‘Is the death penalty an anachronism?’ 433 00:36:14,430 --> 00:36:15,800 – change of tack! 434 00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:21,760 This was the question that was the precursor to my dyslexia diagnosis, and also the precursor 435 00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:29,640 to the suggestion that I was attention deficit disordered, and also that I might need to 436 00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:33,400 get checked out for sensory processing disorder and Irlen Syndrome. 437 00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:36,270 Anyway, so it kind of started the journey. 438 00:36:36,270 --> 00:36:40,180 I was a law student, so this was the question that was being posed to us. 439 00:36:40,180 --> 00:36:45,790 ‘Anachronism’ appeared to me as you see it here on the screen, in this now digitally 440 00:36:45,790 --> 00:36:51,750 on-trend and thereby comforting single-spaced formation. 441 00:36:51,750 --> 00:36:57,471 When I read a new word and when I read that new word, I sucked up each letter with my 442 00:36:57,471 --> 00:37:03,910 eyes, left to right; as right to left, they would dissolve into nothingness. 443 00:37:03,910 --> 00:37:08,182 Below my first-class mark there was an observation about how frequently ‘anachronism’ appeared 444 00:37:08,182 --> 00:37:14,900 and that I had spelt it differently and incorrectly every time, complete with a randomised flourish 445 00:37:14,900 --> 00:37:22,030 of capital and lower case A. I now know that my doing so, and I do it in my scholarship 446 00:37:22,030 --> 00:37:27,000 now, before I do what I call ‘neurotypical proof’ my writing, and kind of fix it for 447 00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:31,360 the neurotypicals, is a kind of dyslexic verbal stimming. 448 00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:43,000 ‘Stimming’ is a shortened word to describe stimulatory behaviour that I do as an autist. 449 00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:49,710 Many autistic people self-regulate through stimming, maybe it is through playing with 450 00:37:49,710 --> 00:37:57,070 your hair, it can be anything like biting your nails, it can be doing this. 451 00:37:57,070 --> 00:38:00,660

Stimming is great, I encourage it. 452 00:38:00,660 --> 00:38:09,300 And actually since I obtained my psychiatric diagnosis, I am an unapologetic stimmer, especially 453 00:38:09,300 --> 00:38:15,450 in public, so watch out! 454 00:38:15,450 --> 00:38:19,930 So I understood that I was kind of repeating and writing this word, almost to kind of to 455 00:38:19,930 --> 00:38:23,790 try and capture it, to make it comforting to me, so I could feel comfortable because 456 00:38:23,790 --> 00:38:25,109 I’d never seen it before. 457 00:38:25,109 --> 00:38:31,020 And actually, this happened to me recently, just a couple of weeks ago, when a new book 458 00:38:31,020 --> 00:38:35,119 arrived in the post for someone I’m living with. 459 00:38:35,119 --> 00:38:42,930 And they opened the book and I looked at it, and I read it, and I looked at the word and 460 00:38:42,930 --> 00:38:44,130 I was like... 461 00:38:44,130 --> 00:38:47,330 ‘Ira, Ira, Ira, Irad, Iradated, Irrigated, Irrer, Irrer...’. 462 00:38:47,330 --> 00:38:52,580 Eventually I went through the house (as is a Scottish colloquialism which means ‘into 463 00:38:52,580 --> 00:38:56,400 the next room’), and I asked my brother ‘What does the word say?’ 464 00:38:56,400 --> 00:38:57,400 ‘Irradiated.’ 465 00:38:57,400 --> 00:38:58,400 ‘Ah, irradiated!’ 466 00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:04,110 So for the rest of the day, and even in the coming weeks, I would just occasionally , I 467 00:39:04,110 --> 00:39:08,050 would be like, ‘Irradiated’; I would just say because it was kind of soothing to do 468 00:39:08,050 --> 00:39:09,850 that. 469 00:39:09,850 --> 00:39:11,640 OK. 470 00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:16,040 Next slide, we are 10 of 14. 471 00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:20,020 (I’m just going to check the time and come out for a moment. 472 00:39:20,020 --> 00:39:26,910 OK, I'm going to speak just until, just before 7 o'clock. 473 00:39:26,910 --> 00:39:35,030 I was told 45 minutes, but I was anticipating starting at quarter past, so we can push that 474 00:39:35,030 --> 00:39:37,060 a bit. 475 00:39:37,060 --> 00:39:43,250 I am just going to go back into the slides, current. 476 00:39:43,250 --> 00:39:47,130 Excuse the beeping outside there seems to be some building, of course.) 477 00:39:47,130 --> 00:39:54,260 Slide 10 of 14 shows a computer-generated aerial view of the University of Edinburgh’s 478 00:39:54,260 --> 00:39:55,340 Old College. 479 00:39:55,340 --> 00:40:01,280 A North South East and West Wing hermetically sealed, which means kind of sealed all the 480 00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:06,800 way around a quadrangle, which is kind of like a square space for those who are not 481 00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:07,800 familiar with quadrangles. 482 00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:12,100 I mean, I wasn’t familiar with quadrangles until I arrived Oxford, even though I’d 483 00:40:12,100 --> 00:40:16,940 been to a university with a quadrangle, I didn’t know it was called that. 484 00:40:16,940 --> 00:40:17,940 There’s a quadrangle. 485

00:40:17,940 --> 00:40:24,950 It’s green with grass, as is tradition, I am led to believe, but there’s a lot of 486 00:40:24,950 --> 00:40:25,950 concrete around it. 487 00:40:25,950 --> 00:40:29,930 This is the Law School of the University of Edinburgh, where I did my undergraduate degree 488 00:40:29,930 --> 00:40:30,930 in Law. 489 00:40:30,930 --> 00:40:36,589 For those outside of the UK, and especially those in North America, some of you may not 490 00:40:36,589 --> 00:40:40,570 know, but you can study vocational degrees such as medicine and law as an undergraduate 491 00:40:40,570 --> 00:40:42,310 degree. 492 00:40:42,310 --> 00:40:46,520 Different subject about whether that is good or bad, so I shall not digress into that. 493 00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:54,390 So, although, this eventually, my teacher highlighting this, eventually led to my dyslexia 494 00:40:54,390 --> 00:40:56,359 diagnosis. 495 00:40:56,359 --> 00:41:00,610 And I actually conveyed ease with which I got that diagnosis, there are so many routes 496 00:41:00,610 --> 00:41:07,040 that rely on a lot of self-advocacy, a lot of, a good executive function. 497 00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:13,450 When I say ‘executive function’, I mean organising, processing, memory, all the things 498 00:41:13,450 --> 00:41:17,720 that neurodivergent people struggle with to obtain that diagnosis. 499 00:41:17,720 --> 00:41:23,480 So I don’t want to actually undermine how difficult that was. 500 00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:30,040 And the theme of the hashtag is that obtaining, jumping through those hoops was another reason 501 00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:35,480 why people dropped out: getting the diagnosis was too hard, and in my position as a teacher 502 00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:45,600 I have certainly witnessed that in the short time I have been an academic and it is heartbreaking. 503 00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:52,250 So here is a reason #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut: trauma. 504 00:41:52,250 --> 00:41:58,210 I have a vivid memory of when my essay was returned to me in class. 505 00:41:58,210 --> 00:42:06,580 Like many autists I am constantly aware of my body in space, I am always constantly reflecting 506 00:42:06,580 --> 00:42:13,890 on proprioceptive – I hadn’t heard that word until I was diagnosed – proprioceptive 507 00:42:13,890 --> 00:42:15,119 relationship. 508 00:42:15,119 --> 00:42:20,720 Kind of the relationship of my body to this chair, to this wall, to touch, to feel, for 509 00:42:20,720 --> 00:42:21,720 example. 510 00:42:21,720 --> 00:42:27,170 So my body in space is important to me and I was conscious of that from a young age, 511 00:42:27,170 --> 00:42:33,450 long before I was diagnosed; and always people have always noticed it, my family of course. 512 00:42:33,450 --> 00:42:36,930 So I remember my body in space. 513 00:42:36,930 --> 00:42:41,660 When I think about my body in space, even day-to-day, when during lockdown and I have 514 00:42:41,660 --> 00:42:45,980 been going for walks in woodland. 515 00:42:45,980 --> 00:42:53,300 I am always thinking of myself in space aerially, that is from the sky. 516 00:42:53,300 --> 00:42:57,940 I guess we kind of compare it to Google Earth, that is the way I visualise my body in space, 517 00:42:57,940 --> 00:42:58,940 generally. 518 00:42:58,940 --> 00:43:04,030 And that is how I remember this experience at the University of Edinburgh. 519 00:43:04,030 --> 00:43:09,050 I was sat in the east wing of the University of Edinburgh's Old College, where that the 520 00:43:09,050 --> 00:43:10,050 yellow square… 521 00:43:10,050 --> 00:43:18,869 (To describe the slide, I don’t think I did that, in the north west side of the quad 522 00:43:18,869 --> 00:43:26,200 there is a yellow square and about... three floors up, one floor down was where the classroom 523 00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:27,830 was. 524 00:43:27,830 --> 00:43:34,190 And I sat in that classroom with my back to the north wall of the college, I was sat in 525 00:43:34,190 --> 00:43:38,890 the north east corner of a boardroom style setup classroom. 526 00:43:38,890 --> 00:43:47,120 So that is a classroom where the tables are kind of set up, like around in a boardroom, 527 00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:48,120 I suppose. 528 00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:50,150 It’s the best way I can describe it, I’m afraid.) 529 00:43:50,150 --> 00:43:55,100 I remember the trauma in that space and the difficulty I had returning to class. 530 00:43:55,100 --> 00:43:58,359 I held it in my body. 531 00:43:58,359 --> 00:44:05,160 In her 2014 post about being a dyslexic early career academic, and thank you so much to 532 00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:10,200 the historian and lecturer Lucinda Matthews Jones, who has allowed me to share her experience, 533 00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:16,760 how she was traumatised for two years when a reviewer questioned her mis-capitalisation 534 00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:22,119 of C in church. 535 00:44:22,119 --> 00:44:32,050 Next slide: Slide 11 0f 14 shows a screenshot of AQ-10, or Autism Spectrum… 536 00:44:32,050 --> 00:44:39,290 I can’t say this word, I’m not going to try, quote, quotie, quotient [middle t pronounced 537 00:44:39,290 --> 00:44:40,290 as ‘t’]. 538 00:44:40,290 --> 00:44:45,870 This’ll be my stim for the next few weeks, ‘quotient’ [standard pronunciation], that 539 00:44:45,870 --> 00:44:47,470 sounds good! 540 00:44:47,470 --> 00:44:52,700 Under the title there’s a sentence explaining that it’s ‘a quick referral guide for 541 00:44:52,700 --> 00:44:57,790 adults with suspected autism who do not have a learning disability’. 542 00:44:57,790 --> 00:45:03,270 Autism can co-occur with learning disability, which is why that sentence is included in 543 00:45:03,270 --> 00:45:04,270 there. 544 00:45:04,270 --> 00:45:10,660 Below the title, there are ten statements, adjacent to which are the options to go definitely 545 00:45:10,660 --> 00:45:15,589 agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree and definitely disagree. 546 00:45:15,589 --> 00:45:22,030 Below this

is an explanation for how to score the test, how to generate the score, and at 547 00:45:22,030 --> 00:45:25,320 what score a referral should be made. 548 00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:34,240 Access, or lack thereof, to self- and/or psychiatric diagnosis is frequently cited under the #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut 549 00:45:34,240 --> 00:45:35,840 hashtag. 550 00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:43,860 Many will never be diagnosed, especially when considering, for example, how class, race, 551 00:45:43,860 --> 00:45:45,859 gender intersect in social capital. 552 00:45:45,859 --> 00:45:53,380 In fact the hashtag #AutismTooWhite was created by Timothy S. Gordon, Jr, to highlight how 553 00:45:53,380 --> 00:46:00,100 structural racism operates to exclude people of colour, and especially Black people, from 554 00:46:00,100 --> 00:46:04,660 self-, let alone psychiatric, diagnosis for autism. 555 00:46:04,660 --> 00:46:11,460 Gender matters too: take the Autism Spectrum – Thing – or AQ-10 Test, the diagnostic 556 00:46:11,460 --> 00:46:13,490 screening tool for autism. 557 00:46:13,490 --> 00:46:15,099 Look at Question 8. 558 00:46:15,099 --> 00:46:19,760 I’ve highlighted this question in yellow, apologies for not mentioning that in the visual 559 00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:21,880 descriptor of the slide. 560 00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:28,720 It says that you have to, definitely, slightly, agree, or slightly, definitely disagree with 561 00:46:28,720 --> 00:46:33,540 Question 8 (it’s not a question, by the way): ‘I like to collect information about 562 00:46:33,540 --> 00:46:36,000 categories of things. 563 00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:40,950 Types of car, types of bird, types of train, types of plant etc.’. 564 00:46:40,950 --> 00:46:45,900 Car, bird, train, plant... 565 00:46:45,900 --> 00:46:57,589 So these are [known] infamously, at least I think by now, in the autistic community 566 00:46:57,589 --> 00:46:58,589 as being gendered. 567 00:46:58,589 --> 00:47:08,140 And actually, there is a lot of research being generated into the late diagnosis of women 568 00:47:08,140 --> 00:47:13,740 autists for the way in which diagnostic criteria are tailored to men. 569 00:47:13,740 --> 00:47:18,680 I’m a cisgender woman, that’s how I identify. 570 00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:23,640 But my systems of knowledge – and I have lots of special interests – and I like to 571 00:47:23,640 --> 00:47:28,700 know how things are, why things are typologised in the way they are, right? 572 00:47:28,700 --> 00:47:39,060 And actually, my system interests don’t align with my gender identity, but this is 573 00:47:39,060 --> 00:47:44,080 all contextual, it’s totally contextual, so there are many, for example, cis women 574 00:47:44,080 --> 00:47:50,350 autists who I know who have a lot of systems knowledge about for example cosmetics. 575 00:47:50,350 --> 00:47:54,870 I also by the way have a lot of systems knowledge about shampoo, conditioner ingredients etc.: 576 00:47:54,870 --> 00:47:59,609 don’t really care about shampoo and conditioner, I just want to understand the way in which 577 00:47:59,609 --> 00:48:01,880 ingredients manifest, the way you do. 578 00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:04,420 I can imagine people are really like "Wow! 579 00:48:04,420 --> 00:48:05,420 OK." 580 00:48:05,420 --> 00:48:07,210 And it is contextual. 581 00:48:07,210 --> 00:48:12,770 I spent a lot of time driving in the car from the north-east of Scotland to the south-west 582 00:48:12,770 --> 00:48:17,470 of England, to visit my mother’s parents, my grandparents: they’re English. 583 00:48:17,470 --> 00:48:22,780 The journey took fourteen hours without breaks, and so I’d a lot of time to get interested 584 00:48:22,780 --> 00:48:28,480 in the systems underpinning vehicles, and especially heavy haulage vehicles, which I’m 585 00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:30,470 still fascinated by. 586 00:48:30,470 --> 00:48:37,310 Equally because my dad, my grandad, my great-grandfather were trawlermen, as children we spent a lot 587 00:48:37,310 --> 00:48:39,270 of time in industrial fishing ports. 588 00:48:39,270 --> 00:48:44,859 This is Fraserburgh Harbour; in the slide, sorry, there’s also an image of Fraserburgh 589 00:48:44,859 --> 00:48:47,050 Harbour in the north of Scotland. 590 00:48:47,050 --> 00:48:52,630 There are two trawling boats in the harbour; one is a kind of turquoise blue and the other 591 00:48:52,630 --> 00:48:55,230 is a kind of more royal blue. 592 00:48:55,230 --> 00:49:05,530 The boat registrations are FR285, standing for Fraserburgh 285, and BF27, Banff 27. 593 00:49:05,530 --> 00:49:11,550 And this is the harbour, the port that my dad fished from, and as a child I have vivid 594 00:49:11,550 --> 00:49:17,150 memories of going to this port at the weekend, when the boats came in on a Friday, and left 595 00:49:17,150 --> 00:49:22,130 again, early, sometimes on a Sunday night, early on a Monday morning, and generally being 596 00:49:22,130 --> 00:49:25,869 from a fishing community and having a dad who’s a trawlerman, and your whole family 597 00:49:25,869 --> 00:49:29,339 being involved in fishing, you get to know a lot about fishing boats. 598 00:49:29,339 --> 00:49:34,340 So I have these quite gendered, actually, systems of knowledge. 599 00:49:34,340 --> 00:49:41,320 The point is though, access to psychiatric diagnosis is key to keep neurodivergent students 600 00:49:41,320 --> 00:49:43,230 in education. 601 00:49:43,230 --> 00:49:47,010 So long as this barrier remains in place, and I don’t think it should, let’s be 602 00:49:47,010 --> 00:49:54,050 clear, normatively, meaning ideally speaking, self-diagnosis ought to be valid for the reasons 603 00:49:54,050 --> 00:49:58,839 that that I’ve mentioned. 604 00:49:58,839 --> 00:50:03,700 Privilege plays in to diagnosis, right, and we need to start recognising that. 605 00:50:03,700 --> 00:50:08,520 And it’s required, because this is the requirement to access reasonable adjustments. 606 00:50:08,520 --> 00:50:19,890 (Just coming out

to check the time, OK, I've got five minutes, which is perfect.) 607 00:50:19,890 --> 00:50:30,320 Slide 12 of 14 is a screenshot of Manchester University, a university in England, by the 608 00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:33,180 way, for those overseas. 609 00:50:33,180 --> 00:50:38,780 StaffNet pages, and specifically the Disability Advisory Support Service Staff Service. 610 00:50:38,780 --> 00:50:44,510 The colourways are the University of Manchester’s colours, which are purple on a grey scale, 611 00:50:44,510 --> 00:50:50,820 a darker grey and a lighter grey in turn from the bottom up. 612 00:50:50,820 --> 00:50:57,349 On that page – and I wonder if there are other disabled academics here looking at this, 613 00:50:57,349 --> 00:51:02,839 well, and if they’re not at Manchester, who think ‘Wow, this is quite something’. 614 00:51:02,839 --> 00:51:08,160 When I became an academic I just assumed that there would be a disabled staff service. 615 00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:12,180 To my discovery, that’s actually an exceptional thing in the UK. 616 00:51:12,180 --> 00:51:19,430 Whereas for students, it’s very kind of standard to have a disability service for 617 00:51:19,430 --> 00:51:22,370 students, it doesn't exist for staff. 618 00:51:22,370 --> 00:51:26,540 Curiously, as an academic I have never need to show my diagnosis. 619 00:51:26,540 --> 00:51:31,280 So it’s different for academics about this evidence of psychiatric diagnoses to anyone. 620 00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:37,510 I have never had to show them, which is kind of baffling as I went through my student days 621 00:51:37,510 --> 00:51:42,640 having to show them, and I'm sure everyone feels the repeated trauma of being asked to 622 00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:47,960 disclose the documents you see from psychiatric diagnosis for various things. 623 00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:49,510 And for various reasons. 624 00:51:49,510 --> 00:51:53,430 You think, why is once not enough? 625 00:51:53,430 --> 00:52:03,790 Why do I have to keep proving to you that I am disabled, and in my case neurodivergent? 626 00:52:03,790 --> 00:52:07,099 So I didn’t have to do that as a academic. 627 00:52:07,099 --> 00:52:12,500 Including – and this is the thing that baffles me most – the Department of Work and Pensions, 628 00:52:12,500 --> 00:52:19,890 which is a branch of government and they provides state social support, whose Access to Work 629 00:52:19,890 --> 00:52:23,730 scheme fills the space of Disabled Students Allowance in the UK. 630 00:52:23,730 --> 00:52:29,310 Of course, I don’t know if this is an exception, since disability provision for employees as 631 00:52:29,310 --> 00:52:36,859 opposed to students is so ad hoc in my experience in the Higher Education sector, there simply 632 00:52:36,859 --> 00:52:42,060 is not enough information out there what the standard procedures ought to be. 633 00:52:42,060 --> 00:52:45,710 I only have my own experience in this regard. 634 00:52:45,710 --> 00:52:51,370 I would be interested to know what others are experiencing. 635 00:52:51,370 --> 00:52:58,420 Notwithstanding their privilege as professionals and PhD holders, disability provision in my 636 00:52:58,420 --> 00:53:02,560 experience is much worse for academics than it is for students. 637 00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:09,839 It’s almost as if – and I think there is also a hierarchy, even within student experience, 638 00:53:09,839 --> 00:53:16,410 from undergraduate and when you get to PhD, the provision in my experience at PhD for 639 00:53:16,410 --> 00:53:20,290 disabled students – it was bad. 640 00:53:20,290 --> 00:53:27,140 And again, a sector-wide issue, and I was quite shocked by that. 641 00:53:27,140 --> 00:53:30,420 And then once I became an academic it became even worse. 642 00:53:30,420 --> 00:53:37,220 It is almost as if there’s this idea that if you progress through [inaudible], you can't 643 00:53:37,220 --> 00:53:38,220 be disabled. 644 00:53:38,220 --> 00:53:42,190 The further you get you’re less likely to be disabled and therefore you don't need the 645 00:53:42,190 --> 00:53:43,990 services and more. 646 00:53:43,990 --> 00:53:46,859 It’s completely baffling. 647 00:53:46,859 --> 00:53:52,770 So for example, very few Higher Education institutions have a dedicated Staff Disability 648 00:53:52,770 --> 00:53:54,869 service, whereas this is standard for students. 649 00:53:54,869 --> 00:53:59,810 I should say Oxford has one as well, the old University. 650 00:53:59,810 --> 00:54:06,290 So In my and many of my disabled colleagues’ view, occupational health is not fit for our 651 00:54:06,290 --> 00:54:11,760 purposes because it is premised on the medical model of disability, and there’s not enough 652 00:54:11,760 --> 00:54:16,480 knowledge about the social model. 653 00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:20,520 One academic told me that their occupational health advisor laughed at them, and thought 654 00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:26,740 they were joking when they requested reasonable adjustments for Specific Learning Difficulties 655 00:54:26,740 --> 00:54:33,711 and Autism in relation to their communications: so asking for neurotypical or nondisabled 656 00:54:33,711 --> 00:54:36,839 colleagues to communicate with them in a way that was more accessible. 657 00:54:36,839 --> 00:54:42,650 They were left, then, to rely on the good will of a line manager who did implement the 658 00:54:42,650 --> 00:54:43,650 change. 659 00:54:43,650 --> 00:54:48,472 And others spoke of changes as well, academics, that they did not request that would have 660 00:54:48,472 --> 00:54:52,269 disabled them even further had nothing been done at all. 661 00:54:52,269 --> 00:54:56,390 This is about listening to what we ask for, right? 662 00:54:56,390 --> 00:54:58,560 Final slide. 663 00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:06,060 Slide 13 of 14: The title page of Volume 1 of Thomas Hardy's 1886 ‘The Mayor Of Casterbridge: 664 00:55:06,060 --> 00:55:14,050 the Life and Death of a Man of Character’, as its full

title is and was. 665 00:55:14,050 --> 00:55:18,390 The author’s name sits below the title, together with a list of his previous works, 666 00:55:18,390 --> 00:55:23,800 including ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’, and ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ etc. 667 00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:28,040 The publisher Smith Elder and Cole sits at the bottom of the page. 668 00:55:28,040 --> 00:55:34,390 And I want to finish up now, starting where I began, with Hardy. 669 00:55:34,390 --> 00:55:36,819 I will move on to him in a moment. 670 00:55:36,819 --> 00:55:44,060 There’s also a quotation on this slide, which I will read out in a moment. 671 00:55:44,060 --> 00:55:48,760 The neurotypical University is designed for neurotypical people. 672 00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:56,060 The neurotypical University operates from the premise that we keep structures in place 673 00:55:56,060 --> 00:56:03,810 that support naturally neurotypical people, meaning that neurodivergent people have to 674 00:56:03,810 --> 00:56:10,260 ask for adjustments when we are let in through the back door. 675 00:56:10,260 --> 00:56:15,130 One of the things I have been thinking about, in my role as a teacher and educator, is the 676 00:56:15,130 --> 00:56:22,089 way in which written assessment remains the kind of medium par excellence which we ask 677 00:56:22,089 --> 00:56:29,660 students to undertake. 678 00:56:29,660 --> 00:56:31,650 Take dyslexic students for example. 679 00:56:31,650 --> 00:56:37,869 And this is something very personal for me being a scholar and writing my first book 680 00:56:37,869 --> 00:56:43,500 at the moment, and writing this book about neurodivergence in the Academy. 681 00:56:43,500 --> 00:56:47,450 I'm not writing that book by the way because I have got reasonable adjustments to record 682 00:56:47,450 --> 00:56:54,700 it, and someone’s going to transcribe the manuscript, which is great. 683 00:56:54,700 --> 00:57:03,540 But I'm slightly confused that, for example, that we ask dyslexic, dyspraxic and ADHD students, 684 00:57:03,540 --> 00:57:06,100 especially, to complete written assignments. 685 00:57:06,100 --> 00:57:11,340 It’s almost like ‘extra time’, which is not extra time at all. 686 00:57:11,340 --> 00:57:20,410 It just gives them a bit more time to allow them to get somewhere close to their non-dyslexic 687 00:57:20,410 --> 00:57:21,410 et cetera counterparts. 688 00:57:21,410 --> 00:57:25,390 So it is not even, I think, that they get anywhere close. 689 00:57:25,390 --> 00:57:31,119 We are still asking them to cancel themselves, to not do what they are actually naturally 690 00:57:31,119 --> 00:57:32,329 capable of. 691 00:57:32,329 --> 00:57:38,210 And that really disturbs me. 692 00:57:38,210 --> 00:57:42,960 The issue with retaining neurotypical structures is that reasonable adjustments become individualised, 693 00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:47,571 and that’s important to the extent that, of course, not all disabled people are the 694 00:57:47,571 --> 00:57:48,571 same. 695

00:57:48,571 --> 00:57:50,840 Not all neurodivergent people are the same. 696 00:57:50,840 --> 00:57:54,119 Not all autistic people are the same. 697 00:57:54,119 --> 00:57:55,569 Not all autistic people are the same. 698 00:57:55,569 --> 00:57:56,569 I will repeat that! 699 00:57:56,569 --> 00:58:01,319 We are a ‘diverse’ bunch. 700 00:58:01,319 --> 00:58:09,520 And I think retaining these structures and requiring structures to be individualised 701 00:58:09,520 --> 00:58:11,099 is good because we’re unique. 702 00:58:11,099 --> 00:58:16,690 But equally, it places a huge burden on us, and in my view there has to be a larger structural 703 00:58:16,690 --> 00:58:23,911 shift to accommodate us, to move towards an academy that is truly neurodivergent, or some 704 00:58:23,911 --> 00:58:28,960 semblance thereof, at least would be a start. 705 00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:33,180 I want to end where I began, with Thomas Hardy. 706 00:58:33,180 --> 00:58:42,240 Hardy, which is cited in the Penguin edition of his work, the 1985 edition, in the introduction 707 00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:50,000 by Seymour Smith, Seymour Smith says, ‘The business of the poet and novelist is to show 708 00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:58,040 the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things’. 709 00:58:58,040 --> 00:59:07,490 The sorriness underlying the grandest things for me are those neurotypical structures that 710 00:59:07,490 --> 00:59:15,640 prop up the University, especially these elite places of grandeur. 711 00:59:15,640 --> 00:59:23,099 We look to activist work, not just in the area of disability, thinking intersectionally 712 00:59:23,099 --> 00:59:27,680 with race, gender, class and other social struggles. 713 00:59:27,680 --> 00:59:34,410 These are grand places, but there is a sorriness to them that quickly needs to be addressed. 714 00:59:34,410 --> 00:59:46,420 And belatedly, the grandeur underlying the sorriest things meanwhile, is that of neurodivergent 715 00:59:46,420 --> 00:59:57,230 students, academics and people everywhere. 716 00:59:57,230 --> 01:00:28,630 DR CATHERINE WALTER Thank you very much Kate, you have given us 717 01:00:28,630 --> 01:00:33,630 a lot of food for thought here. 718 01:00:33,630 --> 01:00:42,410 I have some questions for the audience, so if you do not mind taking those? 719 01:00:42,410 --> 01:00:50,420 The first question is: As an autistic professor, how do you deal with everything you say or 720 01:00:50,420 --> 01:00:56,980 do being interpreted through the lens of disability? 721 01:00:56,980 --> 01:01:00,360 Our skills become personalised. 722 01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:10,130 KATE WEST: Thank you Catherine and thank you to whoever asked that question. 723 01:01:10,130 --> 01:01:12,140 I am just going to read it, short-term memory, dyslexic. 724 01:01:12,140 --> 01:01:17,000 I am just going to let it sit in my brain again. 725 01:01:17,000 --> 01:01:21,810 Catherine would you mind rereading it for me. 726 01:01:21,810 --> 01:01:31,010 DR CATHERINE WALTER: As an autistic professor, how do you deal with everything you say or 727 01:01:31,010 --> 01:01:37,650 do being interpreted through the lens of disability? 728 01:01:37,650 --> 01:01:40,329 Our skills become personalised. 729 01:01:40,329 --> 01:01:44,920 DR KATE WEST: I understand. 730 01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:52,040 I think there are two answers to my interpretation of that question. 731 01:01:52,040 --> 01:02:00,730 If people, if my audience, whether it’s my organisation, whether it’s my employer, 732 01:02:00,730 --> 01:02:09,940 whether it’s my friends, family, the audience here today, view me through that lens of the 733 01:02:09,940 --> 01:02:13,309 social model of disability, then I’m with them. 734 01:02:13,309 --> 01:02:21,220 They understand, and that's important for me, you know I self-identify as disabled. 735 01:02:21,220 --> 01:02:27,240 Disabled is not a problematic word to me, it is something to be celebrated, and I understand 736 01:02:27,240 --> 01:02:32,550 in the community that is somewhat controversial and there are other views on that. 737 01:02:32,550 --> 01:02:38,910 If people are viewing me or interacting with me thinking about the medical paradigm or 738 01:02:38,910 --> 01:02:44,359 way of thinking about disability, and they see my being dyslexic, autistic, attention 739 01:02:44,359 --> 01:02:50,500 deficit disordered, being at the same time, of course, because of the disabling nature 740 01:02:50,500 --> 01:02:57,619 of neurotypical society and disabling society, often our disabilities co-occur with mental 741 01:02:57,619 --> 01:03:02,220 health conditions as well. 742 01:03:02,220 --> 01:03:06,180 So I am diagnosed OCD as well, you know, chuck them all in there. 743 01:03:06,180 --> 01:03:11,160 I am diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder. 744 01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:17,880 And it’s funny, if people see me in that deficit model, then that is when it becomes 745 01:03:17,880 --> 01:03:20,260 personal. 746 01:03:20,260 --> 01:03:24,319 I have to say, my students are just, they are just wonderful. 747 01:03:24,319 --> 01:03:28,720 Students are always wonderful and I am very lucky to have such a wonderful team Oxford 748 01:03:28,720 --> 01:03:29,720 Brookes. 749 01:03:29,720 --> 01:03:35,080 My head of Department, Joanne Begiato, has been extremely supportive, as has Brian Rivers, 750 01:03:35,080 --> 01:03:36,869 if he’s watching. 751 01:03:36,869 --> 01:03:40,930 Other people who have made a difference, my team in Criminology is just perfect. 752 01:03:40,930 --> 01:03:43,040 I am very lucky in that regard. 753 01:03:43,040 --> 01:03:46,470 And I am safe, which is important. 754 01:03:46,470 --> 01:03:49,480 I have privilege to be safe, I think. 755 01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:57,440 DR CATHERINE WALTER: The next question I'm going to summarise, because it is quite long. 756 01:03:57,440 --> 01:04:11,099 It is from someone who was badly treated at one university

and indeed bullied, and who 757 01:04:11,099 --> 01:04:16,650 later went to another university – I’ll say it, it’s Oxford – where they’re 758 01:04:16,650 --> 01:04:25,800 doing an MSc in teacher education and has had to recover from the emotional turmoil 759 01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:26,920 of late diagnosis. 760 01:04:26,920 --> 01:04:36,590 How long did it take you to recalculate your late diagnosis in a positive way? 761 01:04:36,590 --> 01:04:43,680 DR KATE WEST: That is a really just fantastic question, 762 01:04:43,680 --> 01:04:47,230 it’s a really moving question I think as well. 763 01:04:47,230 --> 01:04:50,450 There absolutely is trauma in that process. 764 01:04:50,450 --> 01:04:55,120 I think other late diagnosed people will agree. 765 01:04:55,120 --> 01:04:57,490 Because there absolutely is trauma in that process, and I think other late-diagnosed 766 01:04:57,490 --> 01:05:01,559 people will agree that in that process there is first the period of surprise if you self-discover, 767 01:05:01,559 --> 01:05:07,579 which is often the case, and then even if you self-discover: I self-discovered during 768 01:05:07,579 --> 01:05:10,090 my doctorate and I ignored it. 769 01:05:10,090 --> 01:05:17,790 I’m avoidant because I'm autistic, that’s one of my character profiles and I had a really 770 01:05:17,790 --> 01:05:21,210 difficult time during the doctorate, not intellectually ever, by the way. 771 01:05:21,210 --> 01:05:27,150 I’ve never had difficulty intellectually, it’s always with the structures and things 772 01:05:27,150 --> 01:05:30,410 in place etc. 773 01:05:30,410 --> 01:05:35,790 There was a difference for me between, there was a gap between self-discovery and then... 774 01:05:35,790 --> 01:05:43,369 I can't remember the scholar who’s called it this, but self-acceptance. 775 01:05:43,369 --> 01:05:48,080 So we can be self-diagnosed and even psychiatric diagnosed but we might not self-accept. 776 01:05:48,080 --> 01:05:57,460 And acceptance for me is still an ongoing journey, definitely. 777 01:05:57,460 --> 01:06:03,609 Especially because I only discovered autism a few years ago, and I never told anyone: 778 01:06:03,609 --> 01:06:10,619 I was a secret autist, apart from another late-diagnosed autistic cis woman, and late-diagnosed 779 01:06:10,619 --> 01:06:15,559 non-binary person, we all sort of self-discovered around the same time, actually. 780 01:06:15,559 --> 01:06:19,619 We all knew about each other, but we did not tell anyone else. 781 01:06:19,619 --> 01:06:26,100 So, for me it is very new, and I imagine it will take me a bit longer time, but at the 782 01:06:26,100 --> 01:06:36,200 same time, I think it is important to stress, how good it feels to be diagnosed when you 783 01:06:36,200 --> 01:06:38,440 spend the lifetime feeling lonely. 784 01:06:38,440 --> 01:06:42,600 I feel so less lonely; it's amazing. 785 01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:49,710 You know, I have hope for the future, but solidarity with the people who are still on 786 01:06:49,710 --> 01:06:51,130 that journey. 787 01:06:51,130 --> 01:06:52,809 I guess I'm there with you. 788 01:06:52,809 --> 01:06:59,970 DR CATHERINE WALTER: Again, I expect you would prefer me to summarise 789 01:06:59,970 --> 01:07:01,960 long questions. 790 01:07:01,960 --> 01:07:14,329 This is a question from someone who is concerned about the fact that in universities, while 791 01:07:14,329 --> 01:07:24,930 attention is paid to the issues we have been talking about, it is rare that people, that 792 01:07:24,930 --> 01:07:32,660 neurodivergent people are in the places where they can help actually make the decisions: 793 01:07:32,660 --> 01:07:40,540 so that the principle of ‘Nothing about us without us’ does not get played out. 794 01:07:40,540 --> 01:07:45,859 DR KATE WEST: That is a really important point. 795 01:07:45,859 --> 01:07:51,319 Thank you for making that point, whoever asked it, really great point. 796 01:07:51,319 --> 01:07:56,780 And I agree, and It is also why I tend to not use neurodiversity language because I 797 01:07:56,780 --> 01:08:01,630 think it is important for me to keep the distinction between a social group that is neurodivergent 798 01:08:01,630 --> 01:08:05,350 and a group that is neurotypical. 799 01:08:05,350 --> 01:08:10,990 Because we are not there yet, so we need to highlight and stress the differences. 800 01:08:10,990 --> 01:08:12,980 I think... 801 01:08:12,980 --> 01:08:21,469 In my experience it has been very difficult working with neurotypical people. 802 01:08:21,469 --> 01:08:28,830 And you know, all minoritised and marginalised and multiply-marginalised people will say 803 01:08:28,830 --> 01:08:29,830 this. 804 01:08:29,830 --> 01:08:37,170 I carry a lot of privilege in my whiteness, I am socially mobile, so I just feel a fraction 805 01:08:37,170 --> 01:08:38,170 of this, right. 806 01:08:38,170 --> 01:08:40,850 I am a cis woman etc. 807 01:08:40,850 --> 01:08:48,049 I do not have to navigate some of those other difficulties and it is still so difficult 808 01:08:48,049 --> 01:08:53,230 to work with neurotypical people. 809 01:08:53,230 --> 01:08:55,380 I think I said... 810 01:08:55,380 --> 01:09:02,130 Neurodivergent people, we need them in our institutions and we need them to have platforms, 811 01:09:02,130 --> 01:09:06,520 we need them to be present, we need them to present, we need them to be listened to, we 812 01:09:06,520 --> 01:09:09,040 need them to not be constructed as problems. 813 01:09:09,040 --> 01:09:12,969 I think that is the most important thing. 814 01:09:12,969 --> 01:09:19,339 And absolutely, that hashtag #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs is so important, especially with people in 815 01:09:19,339 --> 01:09:25,960 the audience who are much more well versed in autism, and the problems around the way 816 01:09:25,960 --> 01:09:30,179 that the autism discourse has played out historically. 817 01:09:30,179 --> 01:09:38,330 DR CATHERINE WALTER: Here’s another one: ‘I'm

curious about 818 01:09:38,330 --> 01:09:46,049 the comment you made about neurotypicalsing at your writing, I was wondering if you could 819 01:09:46,049 --> 01:09:53,900 expand on this, and I am also wondering what neurodivergent writing might look like in 820 01:09:53,900 --> 01:09:54,900 the Academy’. 821 01:09:54,900 --> 01:09:58,860 19:10:18 DR KATE WEST: I love that question! 822 01:09:58,860 --> 01:09:59,860 It’s so good! 823 01:09:59,860 --> 01:10:03,719 All these questions are great, but this one is really close to my heart. 824 01:10:03,719 --> 01:10:08,730 Because it was the impetus and the thing that started me on this journey, was that when 825 01:10:08,730 --> 01:10:14,130 I became a so-called professional scholar and I was confronted with turning my PhD into 826 01:10:14,130 --> 01:10:19,090 a book, and I thought, you know, oh God, I wrote that thing, and now I have to make it 827 01:10:19,090 --> 01:10:23,320 into a book, and I thought, I really consciously thought, I am never doing that again, I will 828 01:10:23,320 --> 01:10:27,250 not allow people to make me do that again. 829 01:10:27,250 --> 01:10:28,340 I will publish books. 830 01:10:28,340 --> 01:10:33,050 If you want the book, an object, I will make it, but I am not going to write it in the 831 01:10:33,050 --> 01:10:34,730 way you want me to write it. 832 01:10:34,730 --> 01:10:39,420 The first one, yes, because I’m an early career scholar, I need to establish a profile, 833 01:10:39,420 --> 01:10:45,000 I guess that isn't particularly resistance motivated, but I will let off the hook for 834 01:10:45,000 --> 01:10:46,080 that one. 835 01:10:46,080 --> 01:10:53,840 I have a plug, I am still slightly culturally Presbyterian in my ways, so I shamefully plug 836 01:10:53,840 --> 01:11:02,520 the web platform I have, which is called DyslexicAcademic.com, and in there I talk about neurotypical writing, 837 01:11:02,520 --> 01:11:04,890 especially how it follows this linear pattern. 838 01:11:04,890 --> 01:11:10,469 It’s actually something that the theologian Dan Holloway as spoken about more than me, 839 01:11:10,469 --> 01:11:17,060 and who actually drew my attention to it, when they actually talked about how this linear 840 01:11:17,060 --> 01:11:24,350 form of prose has a history in the early modern period in particular and it endures today 841 01:11:24,350 --> 01:11:27,050 in 2020 oddly. 842 01:11:27,050 --> 01:11:29,730 What does neurodivergent writing look like? 843 01:11:29,730 --> 01:11:34,140 It looks like a kind of practice, at least from my perspective, that is far more typical 844 01:11:34,140 --> 01:11:41,400 in the arts, for example, poetry, drama, which has always been accessible literary form to 845 01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:42,400 me. 846 01:11:42,400 --> 01:11:47,900 I said that at 17 I had never read a novel, but I had read so much drama, so much poetry, 847 01:11:47,900 --> 01:11:51,040 and consumed so much art, music etc. 848 01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:54,310

But linear prose, for me is not helpful. 849 01:11:54,310 --> 01:12:00,670 Yes, check out that website, and check out – there are a couple of posts that kind 850 01:12:00,670 --> 01:12:06,250 of explain maybe what a neurodivergent literary form could look like. 851 01:12:06,250 --> 01:12:13,140 DR CATHERINE WALTER: Lovely. 852 01:12:13,140 --> 01:12:19,000 OK, there are lots of good questions here. 853 01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:29,640 Here’s a good one: ‘What are your top five tips for creating a more inclusive teaching 854 01:12:29,640 --> 01:12:37,500 environment where individual adjustments for neurodivergent students are not needed?’ 855 01:12:37,500 --> 01:12:41,460 DR KATE WEST: Brilliant question. 856 01:12:41,460 --> 01:12:45,170 People are great, people ask great questions! 857 01:12:45,170 --> 01:12:47,230 This is something I think about all the time. 858 01:12:47,230 --> 01:12:51,550 I love my job as a teacher, I love my job as a scholar too, but teaching is something 859 01:12:51,550 --> 01:12:55,570 I absolutely adore, and it’s something I think about all the time. 860 01:12:55,570 --> 01:13:03,890 For me as an autist and with sensory processing disorder, lighting has been one of the biggest 861 01:13:03,890 --> 01:13:05,810 things for me. 862 01:13:05,810 --> 01:13:16,240 And even if you don't have SPD, you may have Irlen Syndrome, and bright lighting… 863 01:13:16,240 --> 01:13:23,780 I try and dim the lights as much as possible, work with natural light, my students are extremely 864 01:13:23,780 --> 01:13:28,070 tolerant – tolerand isn’t the word: they are so generous, they really understand that 865 01:13:28,070 --> 01:13:31,130 that is a productive learning space. 866 01:13:31,130 --> 01:13:36,750 Light low and off, natural light is really important, so that people are not compelled 867 01:13:36,750 --> 01:13:46,400 to disclose and ask, or even come out to their teacher, which is a very unsafe thing to do. 868 01:13:46,400 --> 01:13:50,920 Number 2: For me changing for... 869 01:13:50,920 --> 01:13:53,670 Giving students an option how they are assessed. 870 01:13:53,670 --> 01:13:58,640 If they were to complete written assignments that are linear prose and that is fine, but 871 01:13:58,640 --> 01:14:04,540 if they want to do alternative – I hesitate to call them alternative, different kinds 872 01:14:04,540 --> 01:14:07,670 of assessment, then I encourage that as well. 873 01:14:07,670 --> 01:14:13,920 And I’ve actually taken my cue here from Lucy Matthews Jones, at Liverpool John Moores 874 01:14:13,920 --> 01:14:20,680 University, who really writes some great stuff on pedagogy dyslexia, dyspraxia etc. 875 01:14:20,680 --> 01:14:22,050 Number 2. 876 01:14:22,050 --> 01:14:33,210 Number 3: For me, the classroom is a space where I would never expect someone to speak. 877 01:14:33,210 --> 01:14:39,930 I never call on students, I want students to have the time to think about the questions 878 01:14:39,930 --> 01:14:42,350 that I might pose. 879 01:14:42,350 --> 01:14:47,160 If they want is a question then I develop mechanisms for doing that, I used to pass 880 01:14:47,160 --> 01:14:52,330 a kind of tombola box around the room, so people could kind of anonymously pose questions 881 01:14:52,330 --> 01:14:53,960 and we kind of do it like this, back and forth. 882 01:14:53,960 --> 01:14:58,390 I do a lot of movement in the classroom as well. 883 01:14:58,390 --> 01:15:03,130 (I think this might be 4, maybe 5 – I’m not very numerate!) 884 01:15:03,130 --> 01:15:08,110 I do a lot of movement in the classroom, especially with first years. 885 01:15:08,110 --> 01:15:14,310 Of course, I suppose that presents its own problems for access if people are unable to 886 01:15:14,310 --> 01:15:18,800 move, so I’m mindful of that as well. 887 01:15:18,800 --> 01:15:24,469 I guess in sum, I'm trying to think about access all the time for neurodivergents, because 888 01:15:24,469 --> 01:15:34,050 the classroom was such an unhappy place for me as a student in 2010 through 2016. 889 01:15:34,050 --> 01:15:39,560 DR CATHERINE WALTER: There are several other very good questions, 890 01:15:39,560 --> 01:15:47,470 but I’m afraid that we’ve got to the end of our question time. 891 01:15:47,470 --> 01:15:54,810 I’d now like to call on Tiri Hughes, who is the Co-Chair of the Oxford University student 892 01:15:54,810 --> 01:15:58,540 Disability Campaign, to give the vote of thanks. 893 01:15:58,540 --> 01:15:59,540 Tiri? 894 01:15:59,540 --> 01:16:07,660 TIRI HUGHES: Hi, can everyone hear me. 895 01:16:07,660 --> 01:16:08,660 Yeah. 896 01:16:08,660 --> 01:16:14,160 Zooming is very much a new thing for everyone. 897 01:16:14,160 --> 01:16:19,949 Also, an ambulance just went past, so I’m hoping that will me there is a gap for a while. 898 01:16:19,949 --> 01:16:22,150 So, I am Tiri Hughes. 899 01:16:22,150 --> 01:16:29,199 I am Chair of the Oxford Student Union Disability Campaign, which we abbreviate to DisCam, and 900 01:16:29,199 --> 01:16:34,360 I’m also a medical student at Trinity College Oxford, coming to the end of my second year, 901 01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:35,449 and I'm here to give the vote of thanks. 902 01:16:35,449 --> 01:16:41,270 Firstly I would like to thank the Vice Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, for giving the 903 01:16:41,270 --> 01:16:42,270 introduction. 904 01:16:42,270 --> 01:16:47,010 And I would like to thank everyone at the Oxford Disability Group for ensuring that 905 01:16:47,010 --> 01:16:54,320 this year’s Disability Lecture actually happened, despite all of the current adverse 906 01:16:54,320 --> 01:16:59,650 circumstances, and also for making sure that accessibility remained a priority throughout, 907 01:16:59,650 --> 01:17:05,110 despite all of the changes compared to how the lectures normally run. 908 01:17:05,110 --> 01:17:09,550 And now, I want to say thanks to Dr Kate West for her incredible lecture. 909 01:17:09,550 --> 01:17:14,550 Personally, I

identify with so many of the things that Kate has discussed. 910 01:17:14,550 --> 01:17:19,310 Despite my not identifying as neurodivergent, I do identify as disabled, having both visual 911 01:17:19,310 --> 01:17:23,929 and physical impairments as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder. 912 01:17:23,929 --> 01:17:28,460 And there is certainly a lot of crossover in terms of experiences and adjustments required, 913 01:17:28,460 --> 01:17:31,780 as well as clear differences across [inaudible] different disabilities. 914 01:17:31,780 --> 01:17:33,600 Sometimes these can even be contradictory. 915 01:17:33,600 --> 01:17:37,810 I’m acutely aware, after that conversation about lighting, that my lighting requirements 916 01:17:37,810 --> 01:17:41,320 as a visually impaired person may be very different to those of a person with sensory 917 01:17:41,320 --> 01:17:46,420 processing disorder, but that doesn’t concern me: I just find it a really interesting thing, 918 01:17:46,420 --> 01:17:50,590 to see how would we adjust for that in a learning environment? 919 01:17:50,590 --> 01:17:55,820 That is something I would love to try and see how that works. 920 01:17:55,820 --> 01:18:00,969 The activist in me could easily talk about the topics discussed all day, especially things 921 01:18:00,969 --> 01:18:06,600 like the importance of phrases like #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs and #DisabledIsNotABadWord. 922 01:18:06,600 --> 01:18:12,870 But now isn’t the time to talk about those – although we do have DisCam badges with 923 01:18:12,870 --> 01:18:18,170 various quotes on that I just found as they were being discussed. 924 01:18:18,170 --> 01:18:20,590 They might be inverted, but I thought I would… 925 01:18:20,590 --> 01:18:26,850 I am just showing badges, they are pale blue with a DisCam logo, and we have one that says 926 01:18:26,850 --> 01:18:31,980 ‘Nothing about us without us’, one that says ‘Disabled is not a bad word’. 927 01:18:31,980 --> 01:18:36,000 We also have ‘The future is accessible’, and ‘Disability looks like this’, with 928 01:18:36,000 --> 01:18:42,310 an upwards arrow, and we like to give them out at Freshers’ Fairs and things. 929 01:18:42,310 --> 01:18:48,220 So instead of me ranting on, as the activist in me wants to, I will briefly explain why 930 01:18:48,220 --> 01:18:54,280 having lectures like this and academics like Kate is so important to disabled students. 931 01:18:54,280 --> 01:18:58,590 I know that there have been many times in my schooling where only a few more instances 932 01:18:58,590 --> 01:19:01,590 of disablism would have pushed me to drop out of school. 933 01:19:01,590 --> 01:19:06,270 Never mind University, this actually started when I was about 11 years old and it culminated 934 01:19:06,270 --> 01:19:10,920 in a disability tribunal by the time I was 15. 935 01:19:10,920 --> 01:19:17,040 In fact, the only way I could do my A-levels was by leaving my discriminatory state secondary 936 01:19:17,040 --> 01:19:21,940 school and attending a specialist college for visually impaired people, which, although 937 01:19:21,940 --> 01:19:26,880 it was a brilliant experience, was only necessary due to the failure of mainstream education 938 01:19:26,880 --> 01:19:31,199 to provide basic adaptations. 939 01:19:31,199 --> 01:19:35,670 The word inspirational is so often misused around disabled people, usually by non-disabled 940 01:19:35,670 --> 01:19:41,140 people who mean ‘I am surprised that you can do that normal activity because I am ignorant 941 01:19:41,140 --> 01:19:43,300 of how disabled people function’. 942 01:19:43,300 --> 01:19:50,070 For example when someone tells me I'm inspirational for getting on a bus with my guide dog, and 943 01:19:50,070 --> 01:19:55,320 they ask me how I know how to get on a bus, like I don’t do it every day. 944 01:19:55,320 --> 01:19:59,130 But I hope Kate will allow me to say, as a fellow disabled person and being able to identify 945 01:19:59,130 --> 01:20:04,330 with many experiences she discussed, that I’ve found this lecture inspirational, and 946 01:20:04,330 --> 01:20:09,100 I know many disabled students who watch this, especially those who have hopes to enter further 947 01:20:09,100 --> 01:20:13,310 academia, will be similarly inspired. 948 01:20:13,310 --> 01:20:17,600 And as a visually impaired person I would like to additionally thank Kate for her consideration 949 01:20:17,600 --> 01:20:22,480 in describing the visual aspects of the site in such detail. 950 01:20:22,480 --> 01:20:26,941 Finally I would like to thank all of the attendees who signed up to this webinar lecture, as 951 01:20:26,941 --> 01:20:33,280 well as those who have decided to access it later by the podcast. 952 01:20:33,280 --> 01:20:34,280 Thank you. 953 01:20:34,280 --> 01:20:36,440 DR CATHERINE WALTER: Thank you very much, and we are sorry about 954 01:20:36,440 --> 01:20:46,440 the technical glitches, we will be processing the podcast; it will be out early next week. 955 01:20:46,440 --> 01:20:54,710 We will send out again the link on all our media. 956 01:20:54,710 --> 01:20:58,159 Thank you all for coming, many, many, many thanks to Kate. 957 01:20:58,159 --> 01:21:03,159 It’s been a wonderful experience, and goodbye everyone.