Five sentence summary One of the most common accommodations for folks with ADHD is sharing materials in advance. It allows us to reduce problems we experience due to focusing and trouble with executive functions. We are less likely to be thrown off if we can organize our notes and make any adjustments our brains need in advance of the talk or assignment. I know you finish your lecture materials at the last minute, but that is only an ableist excuse. Based entirely on my own experience, one of the most common accommodations for folks with ADHD is having lecture slides shared in advance. I'm willing to guess it is a common accommodation for many disabilities actually because there is so much room for accessibility when folks can modify the materials themselves to fit their own needs. Yet, this straightforward accommodation that can remove so many barriers for disabled learners is also one of the ones professors dislike and misunderstand the most. Let me be clear: Refusing to share slides and materials before class is ableist and hurts your ADHD learners. To be fair, this is a refusal that harms students without disabilities, but ADHD and other disabled learners are particularly at a disadvantage when we can't learn at our own pace and use our own strategies. Why ADHD folks need materials in advance We have problems with focusing and executive functions, like monitoring our progress, setting goals, and planning. For someone without ADHD, it's easier to ignore impulse reactions and think things through. For ADHD folks, our brains struggle and we follow those impulses, and we may lose our way, despite our best intentions. This is why it's crucial to give us the tools and time we need to organize our thoughts, notes, and space. Having the slides, questions, or other materials in advance allows us to organize on our own time. We can break things down. Whereas organizing in the moment, while a person is speaking or while we need to keep track of directions as they're being given, that's a lot harder for our minds to handle. Examples Giving presentation slides out in advance (even unfinished ones) allows us time to prepare beforehand. It alerts us to what content will be covered and how it will be presented. This matters when your brain organizes things very differently than the majority. If the speaker moves ahead a slide and we're still processing content from the previous slide, we have it in front of us to process a little longer or write down a question. It doesn't sound like much, but it can make a HUGE difference. If we're scrambling to write everything down and organize it to understand later, that means less space for us to process the information and actually learn. Writing itself can also distract some ADHD folks from learning. Some prefer to take zero notes in the moment and just listen. Giving materials in advance allows for this. Sharing materials in advance isn't only about lecturing! In cases where there are activities, like questions you'll ask the audience, or asking learners to do some coding in class or math problems, again we need additional prep time. We can identify areas where we might have trouble focusing in advance. We can read the directions multiple times and mark them up as needed to help us stay on track. In almost every programming workshop I've been in, I have struggled immensely because I make "mindless" mistakes and can't easily identify them. I miss a comma in the code, the entire structure changes, the code doesn't run like it should, the workshop leader moves on to the next step, meanwhile I'm struggling to spot my mistake while missing what is currently being taught. It turns into a disaster really quickly, and I no longer attend these types of workshops because I simply don't learn. For presentations or class lectures with discussion planned for afterwards, giving learners an idea of the questions or discussion topics allows us to shift the burden of organizing our thoughts and maintaining focus from the discussion time to before the discussion. We are better participants when we can jot down some potential answers, look them over, realize half of what we wrote doesn't answer the question, and reign our thoughts in and discuss. Don't want to give us the opportunity to prepare? You risk listening to us rambling off topic, as every related idea comes into our head and out of our mouths. You risk us not contributing at all because we remain sorting our ideas for the first question while everyone else has moved on. I don't finish my course materials until the last minute! Trust me, I feel your pain. As an educator with ADHD, I have definitely edited slides at the last minute and caught mistakes during lecture. I know not everything is finished a week in advance. That said, this isn't about what is easiest for us or what makes us the most comfortable. This is about accessibility. You wouldn't tell a blind student that you can't provide your class materials in braille because you would have to finish in advance of the lecture. Set a deadline for your class materials and put serious effort into having everything finished and polished by that deadline. Ask your students or audience if your deadline for posting materials in advance is enough time, as everyone is different. It gets easier with time, and you are removing barriers for your disabled learners. Key points
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