Dean Beadle — Autistic Speaker and INSET Trainer

Dean Beadle is an autistic speaker and trainer whose talks draw on his own life to help schools, families and workplaces understand autistic people on their own terms. Most of his audiences are the adults around autistic children and employees — teachers and SENDCos at INSET days, parents and carers at evening talks, healthcare staff, local authorities and employers — alongside autistic people themselves at community events. He works as a freelance, self-employed speaker, and his public tour-dates page lists bookings across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

Sessions combine first-person account with practical detail. School training looks at how autistic pupils communicate, what builds anxiety and distress across the school day and which adjustments ease it, with further talks on social and emotional needs, executive functioning, OCD and autistic identity. Workplace sessions cover job interviews, office environments and what makes work accessible. He delivers in person, by webinar and in hybrid formats, and also takes part in conference keynotes and Q&A panels. Before speaking became his main work he was a journalist, published in local, regional and national titles including The Guardian, and edited Network Autism's Autism in Practice newsletter.

For a school or parent group, the draw is an autistic adult explaining his own experience with humour and room for questions, rather than a clinical overview delivered from the outside. He has spoken internationally, including in Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and has served as honorary president of Autism Puzzles, a parent-led charity in Cardiff. He is also a singer: his song Me and Your Normal Are Done takes on stigma and celebrates autistic identity, and he performs at fundraising events. Fees are not published. Parents looking for a public evening talk, rather than a staff session, can check his tour dates for upcoming events near them.