A SCOTTISH father is developing a unique piece of software to help ease the stresses of busy environments like airports for those living with hidden disabilities.
Glynn Morris founded social enterprise Friendly Access after being frustrated at society’s lack of understanding and acceptance of his son Gregor’s special needs.
Friendly Access has spearheaded campaigns for national change with autism-friendly theatre performances and has launched Scotland’s first autism-specific surf school.
Morris is now working with Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) to help facilitate the creation of a revolutionary app .
The unique virtual reality programme will dramatically change the way those with hyper-sensitivity and anxiety experience airports, by allowing those living with autism to experience high-intensity situations from the comfort of their own home, ahead of visiting them in real life.
The moment Glynn Morris decided to do something about society’s ignorance of people with hidden disabilities arrived with experience of being asked to leave a performance of Wicked at a West End theatre in London in 2011.
Morrish recalled: “A sound engineer claimed to find the soft vowel sounds our autistic son Gregor, a fun-loving individual with multiple complex needs, distracting.
“Apart from my mind being awash with disbelief, I just knew this wasn’t right, fair or acceptable, but the most frustrating part of all was a simple lack of understanding.”
Morrish realised the need to create a more accessible society across all sectors and thus Friendly Access was born.
Launched with immediate effect, it spearheaded a national campaign promoting positive awareness, and called for theatres to open their doors to autism-friendly and relaxed performances.
Morris said: “Owing to the success and inspiration from this, we secured the first major West End autism-friendly and relaxed performances of The Lion King in 2013 at the Lyceum Theatre, London and The Edinburgh Playhouse. Both sold out in under a week.
“That single leap of faith paved the way for theatres across the UK to open their doors to these performances on a regular and sustainable basis.
“It’s that ‘leap of faith’ which is highly transferable across other sectors and we strive for the day when we move from autism or relaxed to, ultimately, ‘inclusive’.
“It’s still unfortunate we talk about ‘challenging behaviour’ as it implies it’s the individual who has the challenge, whereas the challenge should firmly lie with the beholder.
“We run autism-specific surf lessons and have more than 100 volunteers that we support, many of whom are not experts in autism.
“We believe and see that a 90 per cent approach, 10 per cent knowledge system is most effective.
“As we know, everyone is an individual, regardless of any singled-out disability or condition, and we look for solutions and question our own behaviour towards what our expectations of the individuals are and how to achieve those.
“The more we study, the more we create the habit of over-engineering things and this is where innovation comes into play.”
Find our more on the Highlands and Islands Enterprise website.
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