Culture, celebration, and three commitments

Culture is the audit's last dimension and the one most often delegated to 'vibes'. We do the opposite: we ask what specifically you celebrate, name, recognize, and protect. Then we ask for three commitments with owners and dates.

The audit's culture tab tracks four sub-questions, each with concrete evidence.

• Language. Does the org's written voice use identity-first language by default? Are autistic researchers cited where their work informs practice? Is the org's external comms about autism written by autistic people, or about them?
• Recognition. Are contributions named specifically, in writing, in shared channels? Is recognition disproportionately collected by the loudest staff, or distributed across communication styles? Is autistic-coded work (written briefs, deep documentation, edge-case catches) recognized as much as extroverted work?
• Belonging. Is there an autistic-affinity or neurodiverse-affinity ERG, if staff have asked for one? Are external speakers regularly autistic (and paid for their time)? Are autistic staff over-represented as 'culture educators' (a form of unpaid labor)?
• Protection. When friction arises and a peer brings a tone complaint about an autistic colleague, does the org back substantive work? Does it refuse to adjudicate tone, on the record? Is there a documented norm that says so?

The audit closes with the three commitments tab. The rules:

• Three. Not twenty. Not 'a portfolio of initiatives'. Three.
• Each has an owner. A named human, not a department.
• Each has a date. A specific date this fiscal year, not 'ongoing'.
• Each has evidence. A document, a published norm, a delivered training, a redrafted JD — something a future you can hold up.
• You re-run the audit annually. Same template, same dimensions. The unit of progress is year-over-year delta.

One last reframe before you go fill the template in. The point of this work is not to be a 'good org for autistic staff' the way 'good for sea turtles' is a slogan on a beach. The point is to be a workplace whose defaults are written to fit how human attention, communication, and bodies actually work — full stop. A workplace built that way is somewhere parents on the school run, people with chronic illness, introverts, second-language English speakers, and autistic colleagues all choose to do their best work for a long time. The audit pays compound interest. Run it.