The autistic and ADHD creator and writer joins us for an invaluable awareness workshop
We were recently joined by the fantastic Ellie Middleton, founder of (un)masked: a community for neurodivergent people, for a workshop on neurodiversity awareness.
Ellie is a content creator and writer, and her insightful workshop took us on the journey of her own neurodiversity story, from childhood to a diagnosis of both autism spectrum disorder and ADHD at the age of 24.
We so were touched and honoured that she shared with us an open and vulnerable personal overview of her backstory and experience. She shared with us the research, resources, and ultimately the paradigm shift, which changed how she saw the world and how she considered neurodiversity; which led to her understanding and embracing the strengths of her autism and ADHD.
The workshop also highlighted the traits of autism and ADHD, breaking biases and common misunderstandings, and equipping our sprites with a deeper understanding of what autism and ADHD are outside of stereotypical portrayals.
Ellie also demonstrated key practices we can employ to best support inclusivity for our teams and teammates, as well as strategies we can immediately implement at our studio. Practices such as effective, clear and open communicative methods, flexible approaches to work, and sensory work and space considerations can make our workplace, environments and interviews more neurodivergent friendly.
We then enjoyed an extensive open Q&A session, where Ellie kindly advised on some game design considerations we could explore to best to support our neurodivergent players and explained how we can further educate ourselves to continue our learning and better support our friends, family and colleagues.
Ellie was so generous with her time and information, and our sprites can’t thank her enough for this incredibly valuable workshop which helped our whole team.
Find fantastic (un)masked resources here: www.weareunmasked.com
