Understanding experiences outside your own
- Qualia — subjective experience that does not show up on the outside
- Sensory and cognitive differences
- Executive-function differences
- Invisible experiences and barriers
For allies
Support without overwriting.
Allyship here means learning the difference between your map of a situation and someone else’s. It is not a personality. It is a set of practices that can be taught, checked, and improved.
What this page will hold
Full essays and tools come in a later phase. This is the curriculum outline so you can see the shape of the work.
Communication across neurotypes
- Double empathy: the mismatch is mutual, not a deficit on one side
- Explicit versus implicit communication
- Misinterpretation of behaviour, affect, or tone
- Communicating for clarity instead of for social smoothness
Recognizing risk
- Overload
- Burnout
- Exclusion
- Misinterpretation that becomes punishment
How to support someone
- Practical allyship that does not centre you
- Supporting without speaking over someone
- Supporting autonomy and agency
- Advocating inside organizations you already belong to
A working definition
You do not need to fully inhabit another person’s sensory or cognitive world. You do need to stop treating your own as the default.
The most common failure is helpfulness that removes agency: speaking for someone, smoothing over a barrier they named, or converting their access need into a vibe. Start with explicit communication, ask before translating, and leave the decision with them.
If the barrier is inside an organization
Process, policy, and product work lives on the Organizations page. Allyship inside a workplace is still design work — it just has a different starting door.