We build the spaces we needed and never had.
Most events aren’t built for us. Conferences are sensory and social overwhelm. Standard formats demand real-time spoken performance under conditions that activate Exposure Anxiety, Situational Mutism, and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. The meatspace defaults — back-to-back sessions, forced networking, camera-on participation, loud rooms with no retreat — are designed for a particular kind of bodymind, and they exclude everyone else by assumption.
We do not replicate those defaults. We build differently, from different roots.
We come from the DIY punk tradition, where excluded communities stopped waiting for permission and built their own venues, their own scenes, their own public space from private space. We also come from the neurodivergent internet tradition, where autistic and neurodivergent people built the online communication environment — text, asynchronous, distributed, written — because we needed it to exist in public life at all. These are not separate lineages. They are the same impulse: if the existing infrastructure won’t hold us, we make new infrastructure.
One could make the argument that autistic people created the very computer environment autistic people are most comfortable in.
Our events are inheritors of both. The philosophy behind them is the same philosophy behind those spaces: build for the people who are most excluded, and you build something better for everyone.
The accommodations for natural human variation should be mutual.
The accommodations for natural human variation should be mutual.
We do not think of access as a checklist of things we do for disabled people. We think of it as the basic condition of building any space worth being in. When a space works for wheelchair users, for people with sensory sensitivities, for people who need to retreat and return, for people who communicate in writing rather than speech — that space works better for everyone. Mutual accommodation is not a concession. It is good design.
You can’t just open the door; you have to put out a welcome mat.
Making safer spaces is more than a checklist. You have to think both holistically and specifically. Don’t overlook the little things that make up the overall feel of your space.
The feel of a space is made up of a thousand small decisions: how loud it is, whether there is somewhere to sit down and recover, whether people know they can leave and come back, whether the food is safe, whether the air is breathable, whether someone will try to touch your mobility aid, whether the format demands you perform in real-time or allows you to participate on your own terms. We attend to all of those.
We design for the formats neurodivergent people actually thrive in.
Neurodivergent people have spent decades developing communication and collaboration environments that work for us. Those environments have specific features. We build our events around them.
Asynchronous communication allows processing time. Real-time synchronous formats — the backbone of standard events — concentrate power toward people who can speak fluently and quickly under social pressure. They disadvantage everyone whose executive functioning, language processing, or anxiety requires more time to respond. Async removes that pressure.
Synchronous communication can cause significant anxiety for an autistic person because not enough time is given for them to process and plan what they want to say.
Written communication is the great social equalizer. Text removes the performance demands of spoken interaction, enables participation across energy levels and communication styles, and creates a record. It is not a lesser substitute for speech. For many of us, it is the format in which we are most fully ourselves.
Intermittent collaboration means group participation punctuated by breaks for solo thinking and recovery. Constant togetherness is not optimal for anyone, and for many neurodivergent people it is actively harmful. The best outcomes come from groups whose members interact intermittently — together, then apart, then together again.
Groups whose members interacted only intermittently preserved the best of both worlds, rather than succumbing to the worst.
Flexibility in format, pacing, and participation mode. There is no one-size-fits-all accessibility. User control — choosing how to show up, how much to engage, when to be present and when to step back — is the only real solution.
There is no one size fits all when it comes to accessibility. Giving the user full control to set up what works best for them is always the better choice.
We build Cavendish Space.
Every Stimpunks event — in-person or online — is an attempt to build Cavendish Space: psychologically and sensory safe environments suited to zone work, flow states, intermittent collaboration, and collaborative niche construction.
Cavendish Space is structured around three primordial learning environments:
Caves — spaces for quiet reflection, introspection, and self-directed presence. A corner with seating away from the crowd. A muted breakout room. Somewhere to simply be, without performing.
Campfires — spaces for learning with a storyteller, expert, or curator. Small-group, intimate, with room for questions and conversation. Not a lecture hall. A fire you can sit close to.
Watering Holes — spaces for social learning with peers. Larger, more open, noisier if needed, with the feel of a commons rather than an auditorium.
These spaces exist simultaneously. People move between them on their own. No one is required to be in the watering hole when they need the cave. No one is trapped in the cave when they want the fire.
When students have developed a little bit of metacognitive language around their learning spaces, they are able to take control of their learning and their learning spaces — they can move to the space that best fits the type of learning that they are doing.
At in-person events, caves are quiet rooms and corners; campfires are small circles; watering holes are the main shared space. Online, caves are muted breakout rooms where people hang out without speaking; campfires are small video or text rooms where conversation is encouraged; watering holes are the main channel or room where the whole community gathers.
The cave, the campfire, and the watering hole are not amenities. They are the architecture.
We provide interaction badges and bodymind affirmations.
Interaction badges — green, yellow, red — let people communicate their social availability without having to say a word. Green: happy to be approached. Yellow: please don’t approach me unless I approach you first. Red: I need space right now.
These were developed by autistic people for autistic spaces. They belong at every event.
At conventions that are well attended by Autistic people, these tools are invaluable, helping us socialize while also putting our boundaries on display.
Devon Price, Unmasking Autism
Alongside badges, we provide outlets for stimming, pacing, fidgeting, and retreating — and we name them explicitly, so people know they are welcome. Stimming is not a behavior to manage. It is regulation. It belongs here.
We go online, and we mean it.
As a disability organization operating during an ongoing mass disabling event, we take virtual events seriously — not as a pandemic workaround, not as a lesser substitute for in-person, but as a format with real strengths and affordances that in-person spaces cannot offer.
It’s a reimagining of the conference model using virtual space as an asset.
Nick Covington, Human Restoration Project
Online communication is a valid accommodation for the social disability that comes with being Autistic.
Infodumplings, our weekly Thursday community gathering, is built entirely on these principles: async-friendly, text-forward, glossary-anchored, with built-in bodymind breaks and an open mic that invites people to share what they’re actually thinking about. It is the weekly realization of this philosophy.
Every conference and gathering should have a backchannel at minimum. Ours are designed from the ground up for the people who need them most.
