Reflecting on autism, representation and design in the context of the V&A’s Design and Disability exhibition.

When I was nine–rising ten, my brother was diagnosed as different. Over ten years later, the way people perceive him still haunts me.

I remember a playground — sun, laughter, running with my brother — until a woman confronted my mum about his behaviour. She said, “I know it isn’t an excuse, but my son is autistic.” At that moment I realised something deep: people didn’t just misunderstand autism — they saw it as a flaw, a limitation, something less. What they really mistook was the world itself — its expectations of behaviour, communication and design.

A generation later, I hoped things had changed. But too often people today cling to stereotypes about what autism looks like — from Netflix characters to casual assumptions. One girl told me that because my brother was autistic, he must have ‘Asperger’s’, as if identity were a checkbox. When I explained that autism is a spectrum and affects everyone differently, she relegated it to her own experience — and even insulted someone she knew with autism. It was a cruel reminder: misunderstanding isn’t accidental — it’s designed that way.

Design Shapes Perception — For Better, and For Worse

That’s why the Design and Disability exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London feels urgent and personal. Rather than treating disability as a problem to be fixed, the exhibition reframes disability as a culture, an identity, and a source of innovation. It celebrates the radical contributions of disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent people to art, architecture, fashion, objects and everyday life — from adaptive clothing and tactile technologies to participatory design that centres lived experience.

Design isn’t neutral. The things around us — seats that are too high, signs that are too quiet, classrooms that prioritise conformity — all reflect assumptions about who the world is for. When design ignores sensory differences, communication variations or social nuance, it creates barriers that become normal. These are not accidents; they are choices. The V&A exhibition calls these choices into question and offers alternatives that are joyful, inclusive and diverse.

Visibility and Identity

In the exhibition’s first section, Visibility, disabled artists and designers reclaim their own narratives through fashion, photography and protest culture — all shaped by the experiences that society once tried to erase. This reframes disability not as a deficit, but as identity and expression.

That resonates with me because for years my brother’s autism was invisible only in places where it mattered most: the playground, the classroom, the social moment that everyone else understood. The world is still built for the ables, even when it claims to be accessible. What if design didn’t just adapt disabled people to the world, but adapted the world to us?

Tools, Living and the Power of Choice

Tools and Living, the other sections of the exhibition, spotlight how disabled and neurodivergent people have invented and hacked solutions for the everyday — from accessible gaming controllers to tactile navigation aids — and how these inventions have often enriched the lives of everyone, not just the people they were originally designed for.

This shows something revolutionary: accessibility isn’t a limitation on creativity — it expands it. Design that recognises diverse minds and bodies doesn’t restrict others — it invites them to see the world through a broader lens. Too often, autistic people aren’t given that space. We are expected to fit in, not to reshape how things are made.

Seeing Autism, Not Stereotypes

In media and education, autism is often flattened into one “type”. But autism is a spectrum precisely because the lived experience varies wildly from person to person. My brother, for example, thrives in calm, structured environments and struggles in loud, overwhelming spaces. This isn’t a flaw — it’s a difference in neuro-design, a variation of how a human interacts with a world that was not built with his sensory reality in mind.

Design — whether social, physical or digital — influences how people understand each other. When design ignores neurodiversity, it reinforces stereotypes instead of challenging them.

However

Neurodivergent representation in the media has long been narrow, repetitive, and damaging, often reducing complex individuals to a handful of recognisable traits that are easy to consume but deeply misleading. Autistic characters, such as Sam (played by Keir Gilchrist) in Netflix TV series Atypical (2017), in particular, are frequently portrayed as socially inept, emotionally detached, male, and intellectually exceptional or severely impaired, reinforcing the false idea that neurodivergence exists at extreme ends rather than across a broad spectrum. Not only this, these portrayals are usually written through a neurotypical lens and performed by neurotypical actors, prioritising narrative convenience over lived experience, raising a plethora of ethical issues. As a result, the media does not challenge stereotypes but actively sustains them, shaping public understanding in ways that erase diversity within neurodivergent communities and make real people harder to recognise, accommodate, and respect in everyday life.

“Being autistic is not a disability”

Phillipa Dadd

A Call to Act — Not Just to Watch

The Design and Disability exhibition does more than display objects; it questions the assumptions we make about ability, identity and worth. It shows that disability and neurodivergence are not anomalies to be mitigated, but valid and vibrant ways of being that have shaped culture, innovation and belonging for decades.

Perhaps the deepest truth I’ve learned from watching my brother is this: autism does not make someone lesser — it reveals how little of the world was built for people like him in the first place.

If design shapes how we live, work, play and understand each other, then inclusive design — real inclusive design — changes everything.

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