Student designs sensory pod inspired by autistic son

Angharad, a computational architecture student at the University of the West of England, has a 12-year-old son, Joey, who was diagnosed with autism in 2019. Nowadays, Joey is home-schooled because of the sensory overloading he experienced in classrooms, being particularly affected by sound and vibrations.

Due to a lack of space, funding, and staffing, schools are not able to provide safe places for these children. As Joey’s mother, Angharad had to do something about it. Using the input given by the Bristol's autistic community and the anxiety attacks her son experienced as the starting point, she come up with the idea of the ‘Joey Pods’.

The ‘Joey Pods’ help to reduce the overwhelming feeling many neuro-divergent people experience by putting a barrier between the person and what is happening outside the pod. They are made up of a modular, natural wood structure, which can be reshaped, resized, and dismantled in a matter of minutes, with LED lights and headphones playing calming sounds. Although the idea itself is not totally unique, the deprivation pods already in the UK tend to be very large, inflexible plastic structures, and the ‘Joey Pods’ are more easily installed and adaptable to the space available.

It is expected that they will be introduced into local Bristol schools later this year and then into large events, such as festivals, in 2023. Joey described the feeling of gratification he experienced from his mother’s innovation: "I feel really proud of my mum. I feel really happy that we're having an impact on the world, having an impact on people."

This story was adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-61782460

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