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Sensory Street

Research | Immersive experience

Our project conducts research and educates people on how public spaces are experienced by autistic people with sensory processing differences and how these places can become more enabling.

Watch the videos below to find out more about our research and Sensory Supermarket immersive experience.

Contact

Please get in touch with us at
c.a.manning@reading.ac.uk
Or follow us on social media to learn more about the project

Our research found that autistic people commonly identify outdoor spaces as being an enabling sensory environment. There is a lot of evidence to support the positive benefits of nature. In what ways do you find spending time in nature to be a positive sensory experience? It's World Autism Acceptance Week! In our research, many autistic people told us how they can face stigma and judgement in public places, which can make challenging sensory environments even harder. Allistic people can often hold misconceptions about autistic people and this needs to change! Hello supermarkets? Our research identified you as the most disabling public place for autistic people. Autistic people are telling us how they cannot access your stores due to sensory-related barriers. We want to work with you to change this! Head offices, Diversity and Inclusions teams, store managers, community champions - get in touch: keren.maclennan@durham.ac.uk We will soon be recruiting autistic people and parents/carers to work with us to co-design a new digital sensory guide for supermarkets. Visit the website for more details: https://buff.ly/3zLhO84 and email keren.maclennan@durham.ac.uk to register your interest! Healthcare settings, such as hospitals and doctors surgeries, were identified in our research as being disabling sensory environments for autistic people. It is important to make these spaces more enabling to improve access to healthcare for autistic individuals. For our Sensory Supermarket experience we collaborated with architectural designers, Fortis Design, to create an enabling sensory supermarket design in 3D. You can watch a full walkthrough of the design on our YouTube channel: https://buff.ly/3l03CVP Our recent research publication has been included in the UK Parliament Research Briefing: Invisible Disabilities in Education and Employment. Our work was included to highlight the sensory barriers to accessing public services. This is such an important briefing and we are glad our work could support it. You can read the briefing here: https://buff.ly/3XJhWA8 We are excited to announce that we have been successfully awarded a new grant - the Research England Participatory Research Fund through the University of Reading. This funding will be used to develop an evidence-based, co-produced guide to make supermarkets more accessible for autistic shoppers. We will soon be recruiting autism community consultants to work on this project with us - so watch this space! We are going to be featured tonight (Wed 30th) at 6:30pm on BBC1's South Today. We are grateful this project is spreading awareness about how autistic people are disabled by public places and how they can be made to be more enabling. Tune in! #AutismAcceptance #autismawareness #sensoryprocessing #sensory #SPD #autism #research #bbc #OT #psychology
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