Living as a neurodivergent adult in Scotland means navigating institutions and services designed entirely around neurotypical assumptions that have made little meaningful effort to accommodate anyone who doesn’t fit those assumptions.
I’m autistic and physically disabled. I currently have diagnoses of chronic arthritis and spinal stenosis and am being investigated for ankylosing spondylitis. The sensory challenges of busy public spaces are real and daily, but they can, with effort, be worked around. What can’t easily be worked around is the institutional ignorance of public services. It’s rarely deliberate ableism, in my experience. It’s institutional ignorance, and it’s no less damaging for that.
Daily life: navigating a world not built for you
Two examples from my own life show exactly what this looks like.
I live in a council house that I’ve spent considerable time and money making into what I need it to be: a sensory haven with smart lighting and devices arranged with precision for my comfort and wellbeing. That’s not a luxury. It’s a medical necessity. When West Lothian Council conducted an electrical safety check and found a light fitting that needed replacing, I wrote to the council accepting this entirely and making one straightforward request: that the replacement be fitted in the same position and angle as the existing fitting so that my carefully configured smart lighting network wouldn’t be disrupted.
The council’s response was to tell me that social housing wasn’t there to satisfy my preferences, and that if they made exceptions for me, they’d face demands from all their tenants. When I pushed back and explained clearly that this was a medical need, not a preference, the response wasn’t an apology. It was a threat. The supervisor informed me that fitting smart lights may have constituted a breach of my tenancy agreement and implied I could face consequences for having done so.
I ultimately prevailed. A formal complaint, an explicit reference to the Equality Act 2010, and the involvement of a senior manager produced the apology and the reasonable adjustment that should have been offered immediately. But it took weeks, enormous amounts of energy, and a level of confrontational persistence that many neurodivergent people simply don’t have.
Healthcare systems that fail to recognise neurodivergent need
The NHS experience has been worse. My previous GP practice operated an appointments system that was, in practise, entirely inaccessible to an autistic patient. No routine, no predictability, no preparation. Just call at 8am, hope to be first in the queue, and if successful, be told that a clinician will call back at some unspecified point during the day. For many autistic people, anticipating an unpredictable phone call from an unknown person isn’t a mild inconvenience. It’s an hours-long ordeal that derails the entire day.
When I raised complaints about the practice, including conduct by GPs that was, on at least one occasion, abusive, the practice manager initially attempted to fob me off, then simply stopped responding. When my voice rose during calls, as it does when my mind is working hard to keep pace with a stressful live conversation, I was accused of aggression, and my complaints were dismissed on that basis. NHS Lothian told me the practice was a private business and beyond their remit. My local MSP wrote to the practice and came back to me, suggesting they were aware of their problems and working hard to address them.
The only resolution available to me was to agree in writing that my relationship with the practice was irretrievably broken, a formulation that placed the blame implicitly on me, which allowed me to be moved to a different practice. I haven’t been able to see a GP in person for almost two years, because even at my current, considerably better, practice, the process of arranging an appointment remains too much to bear on many days. I’ve started writing to the GP instead of calling. For now, they’re accommodating this. But I’m one change of staff, one new practice manager, or one policy review away from losing that accommodation entirely, with no guarantee of any protection.
These aren’t isolated stories. They’re everyday life for neurodivergent adults in Scotland, played out in hundreds of thousands of daily interactions with public services, employers, housing providers, and institutions of every kind.
The political failure: words without action
Scotland’s political class isn’t entirely ignorant of these issues. It’s produced legislation, consultations, strategies, and action plans by the yard. What it’s singularly failed to do is implement any of them.
The most significant recent example is the learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence (LDAN) bill. Developed over years in genuine partnership with neurodivergent people and advocacy organisations, the bill promised a genuinely powerful legal framework: mandatory training for health and social care workers, accessible communications standards, statutory strategies, and enforceable rights. In 2024, the Scottish Government shelved it, citing budget pressures and legislative complexity. People First, which has campaigned for the rights of people with learning disabilities for 35 years, described the decision as leaving them “unheard”.
The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee launched an inquiry, heard what it described as “devastating” testimony, including evidence that diagnosis delays had led directly to people taking their own lives, and in March 2026, one week before the pre-election period began, published a report calling for fundamental change without delay.
With days remaining before dissolution, the Scottish Government published proposals for potential LDAN Bill provisions. The Fraser of Allander Institute described these as “a glimpse of how the ambitions discussed over recent years might translate into legislation”. A glimpse. Four years after consultation began.
The fireworks situation offers another instructive example. The Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act was passed by Holyrood in June 2022. For neurodivergent people, veterans with PTSD, and people with anxiety conditions, the unpredictable explosive noise of consumer fireworks isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a serious harm. Scotland’s parliament recognised this and passed a law. Nearly four years later, the act’s key provisions, the consumer licensing system, and the restrictions on days of sale and use still haven’t been commenced. Budget pressures, we’re told. Glasgow City Council couldn’t even implement a single control zone in time for Bonfire Night 2024, having missed its own legal notice deadline. Edinburgh introduced restrictions covering four small areas. The law exists. The harm continues.
Make no mistake: this isn’t incompetence. It’s a consistent pattern of quietly sidelining neurodivergent needs the moment there’s budget pressure or a more politically convenient group to keep happy.
When accountability disappears into political convenience
And it’s not as if politicians aren’t being told. I’ve written to my own MP about welfare reforms, specifically about cuts that would remove the mobility vehicle that is my only means of accessing hospital appointments, which I described plainly as potentially a death sentence for constituents in my position. I got a canned reply defending the government’s position on costs and budgets. When I subsequently saw the same MP praising a government scheme for children with special educational needs on social media, I replied publicly and pointed out the contradiction between celebrating neurodivergent children and voting to impoverish neurodivergent adults. She blocked me.
That, in a nutshell, is the political reality facing neurodivergent Scots as they head to the polls on 7 May.
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