Community Keynote: Neurodiversity Through the Years – Martijn Dekker

Online | Part of Neurodiversity Pride Day 2026 |  Language: Engels

Neurodiversity Through the Years is a community keynote by Martijn Dekker, one of the early voices connected to the online autistic community and the history of the neurodiversity movement.

This keynote invites us to look back, not with nostalgia alone, but with attention. Neurodiversity did not appear suddenly as a workplace trend, a social media phrase, or a policy term. It grew through people finding each other, naming their experiences, building communities, challenging dominant ideas about normality, and insisting that neurodivergent people should be heard on their own terms.

Martijn Dekker has been part of that longer history. In 1996, he founded Independent Living on the Autistic Spectrum, often known as InLv, an early online space created by and for autistic people. At a time when autistic people were still very often spoken about rather than listened to, communities like InLv helped make something else possible: autistic people speaking with each other, developing shared language, building culture, exchanging support, and shaping ideas that would later become central to neurodiversity advocacy.

In this community keynote, Martijn will reflect on neurodiversity through the years: how ideas have developed, how communities have changed, what has been gained, what has been misunderstood, and what should not be forgotten as neurodiversity becomes more widely known.

This event connects deeply with Neurodiversity Pride Day because pride has roots. It is built on decades of community work, self-advocacy, shared language, resistance, friendship and imagination. To celebrate neurodivergent pride today, we also honour the people and communities who helped create the conditions for that pride to be spoken aloud.

Neurodiversity Through the Years is an invitation to listen to someone who has witnessed and contributed to the movement across many stages of its development. It is a moment to understand where we come from, so we can think more clearly about where we are going.

Practical information

• Event: Community Keynote: Neurodiversity Through the Years
• Spreker: Martijn Dekker
• Datum: June 16th
• Tijd: Officially 17.00, but the video is made public allready.
• Plaats: online
• Language: Engels
• Formaat: community keynote

About Martijn Dekker

Martijn Dekker is a Dutch autistic community pioneer, speaker and writer whose work is closely connected to the early online history of autistic self-advocacy. In 1996, he founded Independent Living on the Autistic Spectrum, an autistic-run online community that became part of the wider history of autistic culture and the neurodiversity movement.

His work has explored autistic identity, autistic culture, independent living, inclusion, and the ways autistic people have built community and language over time. Through this keynote, Martijn brings a historical and community-rooted perspective to Neurodiversity Pride Day.

What to expect

• A community keynote on the history and development of neurodiversity
• Reflections from one of the early online autistic community builders
• Attention to autistic self-advocacy, community, language and culture
• A look at how neurodiversity has changed over time
• A reminder that today’s pride stands on decades of shared work and community courage

This keynote may be especially relevant for neurodivergent people, autistic community members, advocates, researchers, educators, historians of disability movements, allies, and anyone who wants to understand the deeper roots of Neurodiversity Pride Day.

Join this community keynote and reflect on the years, voices and communities that helped shape the neurodiversity movement we know today.