Rusty put his hands on my shoulders before he asked.

We were in the middle of the auditorium, the session just finished, people filing past us towards the doors. He leaned forward from the row behind, hands on my shoulders, and asked if he could give me some feedback.

I said yes. People usually do, then immediately wish they hadn't.

"It might not be neuro-inclusive," he said. He meant the stage. Every session at DFTB, since the very first one, we've had all three speakers and the chair sit up there together for the whole hour.

"I'd find it hard," he told me. He wasn't one of the speakers at that session. He was just watching, from a few rows back, and noticing what it might cost someone else.

💡 ONE IDEA WELL

I felt three things at once, and none of them cancelled the others out.

I felt grateful. Rusty had known me for less than a day, and he'd told me something true anyway. That takes a particular kind of generosity, the willingness to risk an awkward moment with someone you've just met, because the alternative is staying quiet and letting the moment pass.

I felt curious. How big was this, actually? Was it one stage, one habit, one session, or something bigger than that.

And underneath both, something less comfortable arrived at the same time. A thought, not a feeling. How many people have we made this mistake with since DFTB17, our first conference, back in 2017?

I didn't have an answer. I still don't. But I know enough about statistics to know it isn't zero.

We've run it the same way since the first conference. Three speakers and the chair, all on stage, for the whole hour, every session. Nobody had complained. I'd taken the silence as agreement, when it was never that. It was just the people for whom it was hardest hadn't said so. Rusty wasn't even one of them, not that session. He just noticed, from a few rows back, what it might be costing someone else.

I went looking for Chella.

She wasn't speaking until the next morning. I found her at the registration desk, checking out the space, getting a feel for the room before her talk. I asked her straight out, no preamble: would she rather sit on stage with the rest of us, or stay off until it was her turn?

Either was fine, I told her. And she could change her mind closer to the time, no explanation needed.

She chose to stay off.

The next morning, she sat outside the theatre for the first hour. Then she came in, got miked up, and we helped her up the stairs to the stage. Her walking frame came with her, race car red, in case she needed it. She didn't.

She gave her talk. Then she got the whole room dancing.

🧰 LESS MESS MORE MESSAGE

The stage was never really the problem.

The problem was assuming that because I could sit through an hour up there without it costing me anything, everyone else could too. I'd built the format around my own experience of it, and then mistaken the absence of complaints for proof that the format worked.

It doesn't work that way. Silence isn't agreement. It's just silence, and you don't get to choose what's underneath it.

Chella's choice wasn't a fix for the stage. It was a fix for one person, on one morning, because I'd finally thought to ask. The actual problem is bigger than any single accommodation, and it isn't really about stages at all. It's about how easily you can run something for years, certain it's fine, because the only evidence you've been checking is your own.

🚦 TRY THIS

Now, before every speaker goes on stage, I say the same thing. We usually all sit up there together once everyone's spoken, but you don't have to. The moment you're done, if you want to walk straight off, that's completely fine. No explanation needed.

I'm not sure it's enough.

Rusty had another idea. What if one of us, someone without a sensory reason to leave, walked off stage straight after our own talk anyway? Not as an accommodation. Just as the normal thing that happens. If opting off the stage is something only certain speakers do, it's still a flag, even a gentle one. If everyone does it sometimes, it stops being a signal at all.

I don't know yet if that's the right move, or whether it solves the problem or just relocates it. But I'd rather sit with that than pretend I've landed on the answer.

Find your own version of the stage. The thing you've always done, that nobody's complained about, that you've never once asked anyone if they wanted to do differently. Then ask one person, specifically, not in the abstract. Not "is this accessible." Closer to what Rusty actually did: tell them your own honest reaction to the thing, and see what they tell you back.

🧭 ASK YOURSELF THIS

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Speak soon,

Andy

PS. Thank you, Rusty.

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