How a new audit tool measures neuroinclusion in practice

Dr Shannon Babbie has a line he uses when organisations offer mindfulness apps and wellness programmes to staff who are struggling with sensory overload in the workplace: 'You cannot wellness or mindfulness your way out of a sensory-hostile environment. Offering a yoga app to someone suffering from sensory overload caused by 10 hours of fluorescent lighting is like giving a glass of water to someone standing in a fire.'

Babbie is a senior lecturer in education at the University of Aberdeen, where he serves as programme director for the MEd in Inclusive Practice and Autism. He is a trustee of Autism and Neurodiversity North Scotland, a Board member of Scottish Autism, and the co-developer of the Belonging Quotient, an audit and accreditation framework designed to measure how well physical environments work for neurodivergent people.

The problem with reasonable adjustments

The starting point for most HR teams dealing with neurodiversity is the Equality Act 2010 and its requirement to provide reasonable adjustments. Babbie's view is that the word 'reasonable' is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and not always effectively.

'Most organisational leaders express awareness that the Equality Act requires them to provide accommodations, but do not necessarily know what constitutes reasonable for their particular context,' he says. Does reasonable mean sensible? Practical? Affordable? Timely? The ambiguity is not academic. It plays out in real decisions made by individual managers who may reach very different conclusions about the same situation.

The inconsistency creates friction: 'One manager might find something entirely reasonable where another may not,' Babbie says. 'That subjectivity leaves so much nuance in the application of the law that little is often done that results in a demonstrable change in circumstance for the person who requested an adjustment.'

There is a further complication. An accommodation that works for one person can become an aversive stimulus for another. A quiet room, a change in lighting, a shift in desk arrangement: each of these decisions has knock-on effects for colleagues. HR teams find themselves balancing what gets done, for whom, when, how and under what circumstances. 'It becomes obvious why reasonable accommodations can be viewed as entirely unreasonable by those tasked with implementing them,' says Babbie.

The standard most HR teams have never heard of

In 2022, the British Standards Institution published PAS 6463, titled Design for the Mind: Neurodiversity and the Built Environment. Babbie considers it a significant document that has not yet reached the audiences who most need it.

'Although it sounds like a document for architects, it is actually a valuable tool for HR professionals looking to move beyond performative and tokenistic neurodiversity initiatives and into structural inclusion.' That is because the standard shifts the frame from individual accommodation to universal design. If the environment is built correctly from the outset, the need for individual adjustments decreases because the space is inherently less disabling. The logic, as Babbie puts it, is fixing the room rather than trying to fix the person in it.

The legal dimension is also sharpening. Employment tribunal cases involving neurodivergent conditions have risen by around 95% between 2020 and 2025, with autism and ADHD now the most common conditions cited, both at record levels. Babbie's view is that PAS 6463, while not itself law, will increasingly be used by courts and tribunals to define what reasonable looks like. Organisations that have ignored it are carrying more risk than they realise.

What the Belonging Quotient audit measures

The audit framework Babbie co-developed, the Belonging Quotient (BQ), emerged from his research into accessibility, specifically from a 2021 paper by Pariya Sheykhmaleki and colleagues identifying five domains as critical to designing public spaces for autistic users: acoustics, visuals, predictability, safety and security. These became the foundation of the BQ audit.

Babbie did not anticipate how variable those domains would prove in practice. 'It was a surprise how variable locations can be from day to day, within any given day, and as experienced by different people,' he says. A university building entered 10 minutes before classes begin is a chaotic, noisy, difficult environment. The same building entered 10 minutes after classes begin can be quiet, navigable and calm. The impact of timing on sensory experience was something the research had not prepared him for.

The audit itself is structured as a multi-modal process rather than a survey. It covers sensory and physical conditions in line with PAS 6463, and measures the gap between what leadership believes is happening and what neurodivergent staff experience day to day. Crucially, it is the mandatory prerequisite for the accreditation programme that follows. The audit is not a report that sits on a shelf.

Organisations move through four accreditation tiers, Bronze through Platinum, and they advance by demonstrating structural change. Bronze requires removing the three most significant sensory hazards and adopting a formal neuroinclusion policy. Silver requires at least one dedicated quiet or sensory space per floor and flexible working provisions. Gold requires architectural upgrades and mandated training for 80% of staff. Platinum requires the organisation to become an active external advocate, publishing case studies and presenting findings.

'If organisations train their staff to be neuro-aware but keep them in a flickering, open-plan office with ambiguous expectations, they have not solved the reasonable accommodation problem. They have just confirmed for employees why they are miserable,' says Babbie.

The disclosure paradox

Babbie cites a 400% rise in neurodiversity disclosure rates in high-skill sectors and reads it as a signal that organisations should find both encouraging and alarming. The rise in disclosure indicates increasing trust that employers will respond appropriately. It also indicates that the workforce is changing faster than the infrastructure designed to support it.

High-skill sectors in tech, law, engineering, finance and the sciences disproportionately attract individuals with 'spiky profiles': significant strengths in specific areas alongside significant sensory or social sensitivities. The case-by-case model of managing reasonable adjustments will not scale to meet that reality. 'HR teams will soon be unable to keep pace if they stick to the current model,' Babbie says.

His preferred alternative is systemic inclusion by design. Soundproofed meeting rooms, dimmable lighting and accessible quiet zones benefit everyone and eliminate the need for the majority of individual disclosure-based requests. Some organisations are also introducing neuro-passports: portable documents owned by the employee that travel with them and specify their working style, sensory needs and communication preferences. The approach standardises the conversation about accommodations and removes the burden of repeatedly asking for help.

The deeper cultural shift Babbie is pushing for is a move away from defining professional success in neurotypical terms. Criteria such as excellent networking skills or the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment filter out capable people who do not perform in traditional ways.

'This leaky talent pipeline hinders access for neurodivergent individuals right from the beginning, and then forces them to hit a glass ceiling somewhere around mid-level management,' he says.

The Belonging Quotient project is currently in commercial implementation, working with 10 pilot partners across sectors including primary education, further and higher education, scientific research, retail and the third sector. Requests are on the table from institutions in England and New York.

The ambition, as Babbie frames it, is straightforward even if the work is not. Stop asking neurodivergent people to adapt to environments that were never designed for them. Start measuring the environments instead.