Tapping into neurodivergent talent: leveraging Universal Design for learning success with Amy Foxwell

In the latest episode of the Moodle Podcast, hosts Shalimar and Dan dive into the shifting landscape of neurodiversity in education and the workplace. They are joined by Amy Foxwell from ReadSpeaker, a certified Moodle integration, to discuss why designing for neurodivergent learners isn't just "the right thing to do"—it’s a strategic competitive advantage.

From the "operating system" analogy of the human brain to the "curb-cut effect" of assistive technology, this conversation explores how proactive, universal design creates an environment where every learner can thrive. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Neuro-Inclusion Revolution: Why we are seeing a massive uptick in neurodivergent identification and how businesses like Ultranauts are proving that neurodiversity is a world-class engineering advantage.
• Moving Beyond Accommodations: Amy explains the shift from a "declaration-dependent" system (where students must disclose a diagnosis) to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), where inclusion is built in by default.
• The Curb-Cut Effect: How tools originally designed for specific disabilities—like text-to-speech—have become essential productivity tools for the general population.
• Combating "Masking": The mental and emotional cost of performing "normalcy" and how asynchronous tools and flexible course structures allow learners to focus on content.
• The Business Case for Inclusion: Startling data shows that neurodivergent teams can be 30% more profitable and significantly more productive.
• Quick Wins for Course Designers: Practical advice for "exhausted" designers on how to implement small, immediate changes—from font choices to integrated text-to-speech—that move the needle for accessibility.
  
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Transcript

 Shalimar: 00:00

 In the past decade, we've seen a shift. More people than ever are openly neurodivergent, an umbrella term that includes ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and more. Studies have indicated that this is in part attributed to the advocacy work and improved screening that is generally permeating the universe here. But the main factor in the uptick is the fact that clinicians now recognize a wider spectrum of traits as neurodivergence.

Improved diagnostic tools and reduced stigma both play a role. In the neurodivergent community, an analogy widely used to explain the difference between neurodivergent and neurotypical brains is that of operating systems. Both compute, but in different, unique ways. Today, we'll talk about the magic of that.


Dan: 00:54

Yeah, that's right. And we've also, I guess, seen a shift recently in, um, in hiring that reflects this new awareness. some businesses are focusing more, uh, explicitly on hiring neurodivergent people. Um, I recently learned about a case study in the US, uh, called Ultranauts, which is a, an engineering firm, a world-class engineering firm that is founded by two MIT engineers, where they have an explicit mission to demonstrate that neurodiversity is a competitive advantage for business, and 75% of their team is neurodivergent, and they have completely reimagined the workplace so that all neuro types thrive.

That's a really interesting example. Today, we're gonna be chatting with Amy Foxwell, who's... comes from our certified Moodle integration, ReadSpeaker. And Amy presented on this very topic at our global Moot event in Scotland last year. So welcome, Amy, to tell us a little bit more about it.

Amy: 01:48

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Dan: 

Okay, so before we dive in, uh, let's have a little bit of the background. Let's hear the origin story. What drew you to this work personally? What keeps you passionate about it?

Amy:

Okay, well, I've been working in EdTech for a really long time, and when this opportunity came up about 12 years ago to work with ReadSpeaker and text-to-speech... Text-to-speech 12 years ago was really, you know, very cutting edge. I was, uh, always into kinda innovation and how we can use innovative technology for education, so I started diving in.

And when I started researching it, I realized that, you know, it touches so many more people. And, and, and like we've said, you know, now with our understanding of the brain, um, we realize that neurodiversity is actually more prevalent than we think. And so, I actually started seeing it around me.

I'm an American living in France raising bilingual children, and even in that context, I saw that, you know, this was something that was outside of the standard. They were learning a bit differently. So that... Then I just got very interested in it, and I've seen over the past 12 years this revolution, and I do believe we're in a revolution of education, and I think neurodiversity is a huge part of that revolution.

So that makes me very passionate, and dare I say, having a lot of fun and, to understand better to, to, you know, work in this area.

Shalimar: 03:12

I'm really excited to talk about this today. I actually recently got diagnosed in the last year and a half as neurodivergent myself with ADHD, and, uh, explains a lot coming to that diagnosis late in... later in my life. Has really helped me, uh, in my workplace, honestly. Dan can attest to that.

Dan, quick confirmation?

Amy and Shalimar:
*Laughter*

Dan: 

Haha, no comment.

Shalimar:

Okay, so, ah, let's get serious. One of the stats you shared kind of stopped me in my tracks. 85% of UK students and 70% of neurodiverse employees don't disclose, like I just did. And I'm sitting here thinking, if that many people aren't raising their hands, maybe the problem isn't the hands.

Is the real answer just to design for everyone from the start, so declaration becomes less of a prerequisite for access?

Amy:  04.04

Yes, I think, um, designing for everyone is, is the goal, and what I feel there is shifting from a declaration-dependent system where we're designing and addressing outliers. That's really the goal. Accommodations is a static, kind of reactive system, whereas, um, inclusion is proactive, and then we just design best for everybody.

So yeah, I, I would say that designing for everyone is, is the, the goal.

Shalimar: 04.48

You mentioned masking, and I wanna make sure our listeners have that framing, because I think it's such a useful one. We're talking about the energy someone spends to just perform normalcy in the learning environment rather than actually learning. That's exhausting. What does intentional course design look like when the goal is to give people permission to just be in the work?

Amy: 

Yeah, masking is a, is a huge issue. Uh, it's anxiety-inducing, and it's exhausting. These are two things that are the worst things that you can have for, uh, learning and, and, situation that is supportive for learning. So, there are many things that you can do, actually, to help this situation.

You can have asynchronous tools, so allowing people to have discussion boards and, and respond with recordings, for example. You can have explicit, uh, language at the beginning saying that people can turn in things at different times, and this explicitly said at the very beginning. So, these are important ways of structuring the courses that take away from performance and go to learning.

Dan: 

We are big fans over here at Moodle of the curb-cut effect, which you talk about, the idea that designing for one group ends up benefiting everyone. In a digital learning environment, can you give me your favorite example of that? Something that was kinda built for accessibility and turned out to be just universally better?

Amy: 06:10

Yeah, I love the curb cut effect, too. I mean, I love it when you see on LinkedIn all of these examples of curb cuts, and you're like, "Oh, my God. I had no idea that came from this." Of course I'm going to say text to speech, um, but I say that because I've actually lived the curb cut.

So, you know, ReadSpeaker, for example, was founded by, uh, a blind person and his friend that they were just trying to find a way for him to consume his university content better. So, it was really about just visually impaired. And then slowly, it kind of morphed into assistive technology, so it was for dyslexia and people with learning disabilities.

And then, you know, and, and I've been on this journey, which has just been fascinating, and then it's, has slowly come into a wider use for basically everybody, you know? So, um, we do see that these tools that were primarily for those with disabilities have just become support for everybody.

That is the perfect example of the curb cut effect, I believe.

Dan: 

Okay. And let's talk about, uh, UDL, universal design for learning. It gets referenced a lot, sometimes quite loosely. In your view, what does it actually look like in practice when it's applied and sort of specifically through a neuro-inclusive lens?

Amy: 07:35

Yeah. So, it's pretty much the perfect segue from the curb cut because it's really what universal design is about. It's about designing good design, you know? And it just happens that accessible design is good design. Universal design for learning has been around for some years. It started about in the '70s through CAST, and it's really based on neuroscience, and it's based on, and I love this, because it's based on human variability.

So, it is really saying that the norm is variability. There is no norm, if you like. So, then what we need to be doing is designing to that, not designing accommodations or for outlying cases. And so the basis, I mean, it sounds very complicated, you know, universal design for learning, but, but the root is just multiple means.

So, it's multiple means of expression, multiple means of understanding. It's about giving lots of different ways of consuming content, or showing what you know, or dealing with the content. So, for example, you might have, you might have a, an assignment where you can listen to it, so this is great for dyslexics, for example.

Or it may be chunked down, or it should be chunked down into pieces so that somebody with ADHD, for example, and needs focus can read some of it, then can listen to some of it. So, it's all about structuring it so that there are many ways of consuming the content.

Shalimar: 09:09

I love that. I'm an avid reader, and I am constantly getting the audiobook and the physical book, because sometimes I need just one or the other or both. It's really revolutionized how I consume the books all the time.

Amy: 

I think it's such a great concept, this concept of human variability, you know? I, I just feel like it's so much more real and, and what we need right now, you know? That, that And, and what's gonna make us. Here we are with AI and all of that, right?

This is actually what's gonna be make our strength is all of our variabilities and all of our differences. So, um, yeah, I think it's a really great concept, universal design.

Shalimar: 

For sure. Now, you talked about giving learners agency in how they consume content, and I wanna pull on that thread, because I think for a lot of course designers, agency can feel like a nice idea that's hard to operationalize. What does it actually mean to hand that control over, and why does that matter so much?

Amy: 10:09 

Well, I mean, I think it's interesting that, you know, you watch Netflix and you have agency in how you wanna watch it. You can slow it down. You can stop it. You can have translation. You can have subtitles, you know? So, in entertainment, we have agency. Why, why not in learning, right?

Agency is really important, because it's really allowing the learner to own their learning and understand how they learn and support that. So, it's important for metacognition. We know metacognition or knowing what you, how you learn, um, is, is a, an important foundation for learner success. But this also takes away any kind of it takes away judgment, it takes away a lot of the things that are causing the learner to feel like they are not in a position to advocate for themselves or to be able to learn the way they need to learn.

So, agency is very important. I do want to caveat that agency means a structured format. So it's not just, you know, no holds bar, do whatever you wanna do, you know. It's, it is within a structure. So that is the, the institution and the educator's, uh, responsibility to be giving that structure, but structure with agency in mind.

Dan: 11:33

That's great. Okay, we're gonna, um, change gears a little bit. ReadSpeaker, of course, are a certified Moodle integration, as I mentioned at the start, and we think that certification matters. Can you speak to why kind of native feeling tools make a real difference? Um, because there's a version of accessibility where the accommodation itself stands out, and I imagine that's the opposite of, of what we want to see as a, as a kind of learning experience.

Amy:

Yeah. I mean, friction is the enemy of accessibility, right? So, if anybody has to stop and download something or go to a different tool or whatever, they're probably not gonna use it. If they do use it, it's made this huge bump in their learning journey, and then there's all sorts of stigma that comes.

So it's, it's just a mess when it's just like this tacked on tool. That's really not a good option. The other thing is, for the educator, it's not a good option, right? Because here they've got this course and everything, and then they've got somebody who's gotta go outside of the course and do all of this stuff.

So, when it's integrated, it just becomes part of the course. It becomes always on. It's, "I am getting help," not, "I'm asking for help." It's just there. You also have a situation where it kind of levels the playing field, where you don't have a stigma or, or any kind of judgment because it's just there and available for everybody.

Having it natively integrated is, is super important, and, and in all content. You know, a lot of times if it's downloads or it may work in one format but not in, in the other. The certified piece is very important too, uh, because there are other things that you can, you know, find and download.

But you really need to make sure that it's gonna work and it's gonna work all the time, that it's not gonna cause more problems, it's not gonna cause more, you know, customer support stuff. And, you know, you need something that's just gonna work. So when it's certified, it's been through testing, we know the quality.

So, you know, you get what you pay for. It's, it's worth, it's worth, uh, having something certified.

Shalimar:  13:43

For sure. Kind of on that thread, I, I wanna ask about the business case here, because I know a lot of people listening aren't making decisions for their organization in a vacuum. They've gotta make a case upward. So, what does the data actually say? My hunch is that "It's the right thing to do," gets you into the room, but the numbers gets the budget approved, right?

Amy: 

Yeah. And this is, this is the part that I love, because this is where I see that both in education and all the way through the learning journey, somebody's learning journey, right, and all the way into corporate and when they become, you know, in a, a business, this is not about generosity of spirit, you know?

This, this is strategic. So, the World Economic Forum did a job study where, um, you know, they know that, uh, creative thinking and AI skills and cybersecurity, all of these fields that are going to be important in the future for employment. And then, surprise, surprise, you've got neurodivergence, which they just did a study on neuro-inclusion in work, and it was about 2,000 people over 22 countries.

And surprise, surprise, we found that those people were over-performing by 30% in those fields. So, we've got, you know, this set of people, this talent pool, we're sitting on this talent pool. We've got this issue with this, you know, the future and jobs and how are we going to do all this stuff, and it's the perfect situation.

However, in that study that they did on neuro-inclusion in work, they found that 39% of the people were planning on leaving their position because they weren't getting the support that they needed. So, this is not now just a, you know, ethical, we should be nice kind of, you know, conversation.

This is a strategic conversation. And like you were saying, Dan, this is going to be separate the wheat from the chaff as far as strategy and the companies that are really going to move forward and have a strategic human resource strategy. You know, we, we're talking about 30% more profitable.

Hewlett-Packard did a study, 30% more profitable, the teams that were neurodivergent. You've got the, their profit margins are better, their loyalty is better. I mean, the, the neurodivergent teams that are treated right, you know, you've got NASA, who actively looks for neurodivergent people, and they have something like 80% of their, um, employees are, uh, neurodivergent, because these are the skills that we need for tomorrow.

And so, I think it's: This is the revolution. This is what I was saying. I think there's a revolution in education, and it matches what's happening with us historically now. So it's, it's very exciting, but I think companies that, that can embrace this and figure this out, they're going to be the winners.

Dan: 16:40

Yeah. And it's not just about the hiring decisions, right? It's it's, it's great to be more inclusive in your hiring and more diverse in your, in your sort of inviting people to the party, but once you've once they're there, it’s gotta be… The support that you provide has got to be inclusive.

Amy:

That's right.

Dan:
Otherwise, that talent just doesn't thrive.

Shalimar: 

Okay, I've got another question. This one hits hard. I'm asking this selfishly. On behalf of every exhausted course designer listening right now, if someone can only do one thing this week, what's the quick win? Change that they could make today that would actually move the needle for their organization and their learners?

Amy: 17:20

You know, I'm probably going to sound biased, but I would say text-to-speech, because hits so many... text-to-speech with the accompanying tools, right? Because it hits so many of the pieces and it's a quick win. So, you know, you've got, um, different ways of taking in the content. You've got focus tools.

You've got lots of different ways that you can make a difference immediately. There, but there are plenty of other ones. You know, you can do things like you can replace one assessment. That's a performance assessment. You can just turn it into a softer turn in, you know, asynchronous. There, there are things that you can do, and I would suggest that it's really important to start today and not be worried about, "Oh, my god.

I have to have a whole plan, and we have to start a whole thing." I mean, you can just start by changing, you know, how you treat fonts or headings. You know, there are, there are lots of small things that, that can be done, um, that make a huge difference.

So, a little bit goes a long way in accessibility.

Shalimar: 18:23

Amy, I know a lot of people spend so much time getting things dialled in. I mean, course design, it's a, it's a labor of love. It's constantly evolving. Can you tell me a little bit about how long it takes to get up and running with ReadSpeaker? 

Amy:

This is one of the great things about the Moodle environment, is that, um, our plugin is really clean. It's fast to integrate. It's, you know, a couple of hours, and, uh, it's really just a question of turning it on. Uh, we can set up trials as well, uh, very easily.

So it's an easy... That's one of the reasons why I was saying it's, it's an easy thing to do immediately to address accessibility and, and inclusion.

Shalimar: 

Can we also maybe drill into the notion of reporting? I know when I was in the trenches of course designing, um, we constantly had to showcase how effective our tools and strategies were. Um, how can course designers who are using ReadSpeaker, you know, tell that data narrative up the food chain, so to speak, uh, to ensure that, you know, continued success with the tool?

Amy: 19:32

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a, a good, a good point, and one of the strengths of ReadSpeaker is that, um, we really work with our, the institutions that we work with to make sure that they have the solution that best fits their needs. That includes, uh, reporting. So, you know, you can see, um, how many listens there have been and what kind of courses are getting a lot of interaction.

So, we have a whole portal where you can see what's going on. You can also choose different languages. You know, there's a we have 280 voices and 80-plus languages that you can add. You know, we have exam mode. So there's, there's lots of ways that we can work with you, and that's one of our, one of the things that we really try to make sure that we take the time to work with the institution and make sure that they have exactly what is needed for their users and their educators.

Dan: 20.31

Thank you very much, Amy. One final question from me. You folks at ReadSpeakers are amongst the hardest working people in the business. You're always out on the road. Where, where do people wanna pick your brains on this? Have you got events that you're gonna be present at, uh, either, either on the stands or speaking at in, over the coming months?

Amy: 

Oh, yeah. We're gonna be in loads of places. You're right. We are hard workers. We are at several of the, of the Moodle Moots. We're actually at Estonia right now, I believe, today. We're at Learning Technologies. We're going to be at several different moots around the world. So yeah, we're gonna be in a lot of places and would love to have conversations with everybody.

Dan: 

Amazing.

Shalimar:

Is it fair to assume that wherever Moodle is at an event, ReadSpeaker is gonna be there, too?

Amy: 

We tend to like... We, we like hanging out Moodle, yeah.

Shalimar:
Well, thank you so much for, for joining us today and for, for helping us understand just the, the business advantage that's, that's here for everybody trying to meet the challenges of, of our emerging workforce.

Dan:

Yeah, it's pretty powerful.

Amy:

Thanks. Been a pleasure.

Dan: 

All right. Thanks for your time.

Amy:

Thanks, guys.

Dan:

Take care, Shalimar. See you later.

Overlapping:

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Shalimar:

See you. [Laughter]

Dan:

[Laughter] Don’t wanna be ya.