A neurodiverse team co-creating brighter futures with our community

Our Mission

Viability is a neurodiverse team working to co-create brighter futures with neurodivergent people and allies, build community, and transform workplaces, schools, and our broader society in ways that support everyone.

What is Neurodiversity?

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term that refers to the entire human range of cognitive diversity. Basically, different brains work and engage with the world differently - but some in more similar ways than others (i.e., neurotypes). There are a LOT of different neurotypes, but just some include:

• Dyslexia

• Autism

• ADHD

• Madness/Mental-health disabilities (e.g., PTSD, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, OCD, BPD, etc.)

• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

• Tourettes

• Dyscalculia

• Dyspraxia

• Intellectual disabilities

• Acquired neurodivergence (e.g., acquired brain injury, aphasia, etc.)

• Neurotypicality

Neurotypical Definition

Although every brain is different, a neurotypical person (NT) refers to somebody who has what we call the “majority” brain or, in other words, who’s brain profile is within the most common range of human neurology.  Because it’s the most common, it’s also the way that people generally expect you to think/behave in our society.

Neurodivergent Definition

A neurodivergent person (ND) would then be anyone who has a brain that falls outside of the most common range of human variation (i.e., any neurotype except neurotypical). ND people often have differences in how they socialize, learn, attend to information, regulate emotions, and/or process information, compared to NT people.

The Neurodiversity Movement

The neurodiversity movement is ultimately a human rights movement that stemmed from the autism rights movement and is now part of the broader disability rights and justice movements. The neurodiversity movement seeks to liberate people from social norms and systems that function as if there is one right way to think, behave, and exist. Instead, we believe that people with all different brain types should be accepted, valued, celebrated, and supported in our society.

What We Do

Having operated in the disability space for over 4 years, we have grown to offer a range of services both for neurodivergent people and for organizations (i.e., businesses, non-profits, and schools). These include:

• peer-to-peer programming (e.g., mentoring, leadership programming, recreational programming, etc.)

• educational workshops

• organizational consulting and process development

• community events

For more information, check out our services pages: for businesses, for schools, for ND people and allies

Our Approach

Our approach is one that centres justice over equality, where we aim to address the root causes of systemic barriers that limit neurodivergent people's participation. This means that we focus heavily on creating long-lasting cultural and systems change so that our society begins to support ND folks by default (e.g., creating neuroinclusive hiring processes), rather than focusing on personal reform (e.g., training disabled people to have “marketable skills”). Our belief is that the solution cannot and should not be to train the diversity away. We work to create spaces where neurodivergent people are honoured and can thrive as their authentic selves, rather than feeling like they have to conform to some idea of what’s “normal”.

We also take a bottom-up, community-driven approach to all of the work we do. We strongly believe that lived-experience is expertise and ensure that any recommendations we give to organizations are rooted in both the lived experiences of ND people on our team and in our community, and evidenced by broader research literature (e.g., organizational behaviour, inter-personal relationship science, etc.).

Finally, we prioritize being peer-to-peer. From our experiences as ND young people, we know it can be helpful to learn from people who’s brains work similarly to ours, or from people who share many of the same experiences. We believe building authentic peer-to-peer relationships and communities helps people feel supported, understood, and less alone.