Hi Michael,

The link to "join the hub" at https://www.myfoothold.org/engineering-neurodiverse-futures/#DWH-form is coming up with the following on my PC:

 The web page at foothold.beaconforms.com/.../ef87bd24 might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy,

Sorry you're having trouble signing up to the hub - I've just tested the form myself and it's working for me so I'm not sure why you're having issues with it. I'd suggest trying to sign up through a different browser as it may be your browser that's causing the problem. 

Let me know if this works or not and if it doesn't I'll see what else I can do.

Ah...it works on my home PC, but not on my work PC (tried both Chrome and Edge). So possibly the VPN mucks it up?

Why do we need yet another hub - simply create a group on EngX?
I wastes resources duplicating systems which then need maintaining and people need to remember yet more passwords.

Hi Michael,

Ok, now I'm in , first comment is that the resources I've looked at all seem to be videos? Please also look at providing the same information in written form - it's a key point of neuro diversity that people have different learning styles / best ways of gathering information. For some, videos are brilliant, for others (me included) they're a complete pain.

I guess it's not straightforward as the resources are most / all from external providers, but it's a good thing to feed back to them for the reason above, also I'd have thought there must be video-to-text tools available now?

Thanks,

Andy

Having looked at it, a) because it's part of Foothold not the IET, and b) although it's simplistic at the moment it is actually navigable and usable unlike EngX!!

(Yes I know Foothold is sort of part of the IET, but hopefully you know what I mean...)

Hi Andy, strange - I can't think of a reason why that would be but you might be right with the VPN! I'm glad you've managed to join the hub now

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your comment - as Andy has said, as Foothold are a separate organisation to the IET we offer our own forms of support for the engineering community, including our new Engineering Futures Programme and Differently Wired Hub. When you sign up to the hub you don't need a password to access it in future - you only need an access link. I'd recommend checking it out if you're interested in neurodiversity in engineering as you might find something you won't have seen via IET resources 

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your feedback. We want to include as much information as possible in the hub on neurodiverse conditions, so we've made sure to include a variety of different resource types in the Resources section - including PDF guides, information booklets and online articles. I'd recommend taking another look to browse through all the resources - we've updated them with icons so it's easier to see each different resource format.

In terms of accessibility, this is something we'll continue to look at and we'll be continuously updating the hub to add new content and improve our community members' experience - so we'll be looking at adding text-to-speech functions in future. In the meantime, for the videos, these do include subtitle functions within the videos themselves, so you can turn this feature on to read the transcript whilst watching. 

If you have any other feedback/questions I'm all ears

Yes you have different formats, the problem at the moment (and I do appreciate that this is an early work in progress) is that it's not for the same information? So for example the immediate features I was drawn to were "Re-wiring dyspraxia from the brain" and "How to get a diagnostic assessment" - the information in both of these appears only to be available as a video? The first of these is a bit irritating that it's not available as text, but the second one is really important that this is available in as many formats as possible - it's core information for this site.  

Re videos: some people cope best with linear content, some don't. I'm one of those that (very much) doesn't. So it's not that I want subtitles, what I want is not to sit through an hour video for 10 minutes of the information which I'm actually after, and which I may want to re-read - and indeed then look back through earlier content. Pure written format just works vastly better for some types of neuro diversity (and far worse for others). Sorry about the micro-rant, it's not just here, there is a huge amount of information now that is being presented only in videos, which therefore does not take account of neuro diversity. It's just that in this case it's particularly ironic!

Anyway very happy to continue this discussion elsewhere if I can help in any way, this is a hugely important issue I've been involved with for a long time and I'm delighted that Foothold has taken it on. And it's not at all easy to work out what to present and how to present it.

Thanks,

Andy