A standards body led by neurodivergent people

Every person who assesses a product for the NDC is neurodivergent. They test with the same tools as a formal accessibility audit and add something those tools can't, which is first-hand knowledge of where a product wears people down.

Why we exist

Most digital accessibility work concentrates on visual, auditory and motor impairment. WCAG compliance matters, yet it leaves out the cognitive, sensory and executive function barriers neurodivergent people meet every time they use a product that wasn't designed with them in mind.

The Neurodiversity Design Council was set up to close that gap. We publish a formal standard, carry out independent assessments and award certification for neurodiversity-inclusive design.

What sets us apart from other accessibility consultancies is that every assessor is neurodivergent and lives with the same conditions as many of your users, so the experience they report is their own. They pair it with professional testing skills, including screen reader use, keyboard-only navigation and automated evaluation tools, which means each assessment works as a technical audit and as user research at the same time.

What we believe

Compliance is the starting line

A product that meets the legal minimum can still be hard work to use, so we assess how usable it is for neurodivergent people and treat compliance as the place we begin.

Nothing about us without us

Neurodivergent people should lead the assessment of neurodiversity-inclusive design, because watching someone struggle with a product teaches you far less than struggling with it yourself.

Certification has to be earned and kept

Badges run for a fixed period, live on our servers and can be revoked, and no organisation can issue one to itself.

Transparency builds trust

The standard is public, the scoring method is documented and every client goes through the same process.

Founded and led by neurodivergent professionals

Natasha

Founder and lead assessor

Natasha is a senior learning and digital architect with 27 years of experience across instructional design, UX, content design and GDS delivery. She has worked in finance, education, healthcare, engineering and aerospace, among many other sectors, designing learning systems and digital products at every level.

Diagnosed with ADHD, she brings deep professional expertise together with lived experience of using digital products that were never built with neurodivergent people in mind, and that combination is the foundation of the NDC's approach.

She founded the Neurodiversity Design Council after years of watching technically compliant products fail neurodivergent users, and of seeing that the people best placed to spot those failures were the people living with them.

Independent review and governance

The standard is reviewed by an independent advisory panel of neurodivergent people, clinicians and accessibility specialists. The panel reviews the standard every year and signs off every Certified-tier assessment.