Project Overview
Neurodivergent young people experience online benefits and risks shaped by interactions between individual characteristics, social support, and platform design. Our ASSETS 2026 study challenges blanket deficit-oriented assumptions about online vulnerability while identifying barriers to accessible safety information and support. Existing digital literacy resources are seldom designed with neurodiverse learners in mind, leaving a significant accessibility gap. This project develops a tangible user interface with visual indicators to help young people with neurodiversity better understand how the Internet works, how their data is used by online services, and how to recognise common online harms. Working closely with stakeholders, family members, and partner organisations, the research team co-designs, develops, and evaluates tools that bridge the gap between abstract digital concepts and concrete, accessible representations.
The approach empowers neurodiverse youth and their families to explore online safety, privacy, and data usage together through hands-on interaction. Partner organisations including Innovate Trust, Digital Communities Wales, and Ofcom contribute domain expertise and access to communities that ensure the resulting tools are grounded in real needs and practical contexts.
Funded by Google Research, the project contributes design guidelines and open toolkits for creating inclusive privacy and safety education technologies. These resources are intended to help educators, families, and developers build digital literacy tools that accommodate the specific needs of neurodiverse learners, ensuring that online safety education is accessible to all young people regardless of their learning profile.
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Published study: online experiences and safety
The ASSETS 2026 paper brings together the perspectives of 57 neurodivergent young people aged 11–13 and 39 parents across seven South Wales schools. Four weekly workshops in each school combined creative activities, questionnaires, privacy-policy review, and scam scenarios. Three themes describe the internet as A Social Space, A Personal Space, and A Risky Space.
Doxing and scams were prominent concerns among the harms presented. In the 16 complete parent–child pairs, young people rated their digital skills more highly than their parents rated them (t(15)=2.163, p=.047, d=.54). These are perceived skills, and the study has no non-neurodivergent comparison group. Its framework is a descriptive synthesis, rather than a validated predictive model or an evaluation of Safety Cube. The findings inform accessible safety information, family communication, and inclusive technology design.