Sensory Inclusive Schools

"Sensory inclusion is about changing environments so that more people can participate, belong and thrive."

What happens when we stop asking people to adapt to environments that aren't working for them, and start asking what we can change around them instead?

That's the thinking behind the Sensory Inclusion Summit 2026, a free online event bringing together research, professional expertise and lived experience to explore how changing environments can support sensory safety, belonging and participation.

For everyone working with schools, the Summit offers plenty to take back into classrooms and wider school environments. But its scope is deliberately broader than education alone, with speakers exploring sensory inclusion across healthcare, family life, mental health and community spaces. Because the environment is more than the physical space around us. It includes relationships, expectations, routines, pace, predictability, choice and the demands of the occupations we are trying to participate in.

Across the programme, the shared question is not simply “How can we help this person cope?” but “What can we change around them to make participation more possible?”

Co-hosted by Sensory Inclusive Schools and Sensory Integration Education, the Summit takes place online on Tuesday 13 October. Every session is pre-recorded, with seven days of access, so you can fit the sessions around the realities of your working day.

Book your free place at the Sensory Inclusion Summit 2026 →

Why a Cross-sector Summit Matters If You Work With Schools

Some of the most useful ideas for schools can come from looking beyond education. Healthcare, family life, mental health services and community spaces all face the same fundamental challenge: how do we design environments that work for more people, rather than expecting individuals to continually adapt to environments that do not?

That is why the cross-sector nature of the Summit matters. By bringing together research, professional expertise and lived experience from different settings, the programme creates opportunities to learn from approaches that may not have started in schools but can still change how we think about school environments.

A Look at Some of the Summit Sessions 

The Summit programme brings together a much wider range of speakers and topics than we can cover here. The sessions below are just a selection, chosen to highlight some of the different ways sensory inclusion can be understood — from SEND reform and school environments to praxis, interoception, research and co-produced design. Together, they show how participation is shaped not only by the individual, but by the environments, expectations and systems around them. 

What SEND Reform Means for the People Supporting Schools

Government reform is increasingly asking mainstream schools to become “inclusive by design”. But what does that actually look like in the everyday sensory environment of a school?

That is the focus of Beth Smithson, OT, in Inclusive by Design: What SEND Reform Means for Sensory Environments in Schools and How We Make It Happen.

Beth is Sensory Inclusive Schools Lead, an Advanced Practitioner in Sensory Integration and a Paediatric Occupational Therapist, with experience across the NHS, NGOs, schools and community services. Her talk translates ideas such as earlier support and stronger universal provision into practical changes schools can begin thinking about now.

For teachers and SENCOs, the session offers a clearer picture of what inclusive by design can look like in practice. For Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists and other professionals supporting schools, it provides a way to connect recommendations around sensory environments and participation with the wider direction of SEND provision.

Sensory Processing Is Also About Movement

When people hear the term sensory processing, they often think first about how someone responds to noise, touch, movement or other sensory input. But sensory processing also helps us understand where our body is, judge movement, organise actions and adapt what we are doing as we go.

Dr Mim Ochsenbein, an occupational therapist and Assistant Professor in the US, explores this less familiar aspect of sensory processing through the concept of praxis.

Praxis is our ability to work out what we want our body to do, plan and organise the movement, carry it out and adjust our actions using sensory feedback. Difficulties with praxis can affect everyday participation in ways that may not immediately be recognised as sensory. A student might find it difficult to learn a new movement in PE, use unfamiliar equipment, navigate a busy environment, organise their body for a new activity or manage a sequence of physical actions.

In Praxis and Participation: Designing Communities Where Everybody Can Participate, Mim explores how these sensory and motor demands can create hidden barriers to participation, and how environments can be designed to make participation more possible.

Interoception, Lived Experience and the Environment

Rachael Thompson brings both professional expertise and lived experience to the Summit. She is an autistic occupational therapist and educator, and Head Teacher at Cairn Education, a specialist school for autistic young people.

In Lived Experience: Environmental Demands and Interoception, Rachael explores how interoceptive processing differences can influence everyday experiences, participation, wellbeing and engagement — and, importantly, how the environments around us can either support or create additional barriers.

Drawing on her own lived experience alongside her work as an occupational therapist and educator, she considers physical, sensory and social environments, with particular attention to the role of relationships, expectations, communication and everyday interactions.

Rather than locating difficulties solely within the individual, the session encourages a shift from asking “What’s wrong with the person?” to “What is it about the environment that could be changed to better support them?”

For those working with schools, Rachael’s session offers practical ways to think about interoception beyond individual strategies, considering how small changes to social, sensory and educational environments can support participation, wellbeing, self-awareness and a stronger sense of belonging.

What Makes an Environment Sensory Inclusive?

Much of the research into sensory processing has traditionally focused on the characteristics of the individual, with far less attention given to the sensory demands of the environments around them. Dr Catherine Manning, Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Birmingham, is helping to build the evidence base around what makes an environment genuinely sensory inclusive.

Her talk draws on research with autistic adults exploring which public spaces feel more or less disabling and why, alongside projects developed in partnership with businesses and neurodivergent people to explore how environments can be designed more inclusively.

Catherine will also share emerging research investigating the specific visual features that can lead to discomfort in autistic and non autistic children, before bringing the evidence together into practical suggestions for creating more inclusive environments.

For school staff and others supporting schools, the session offers an opportunity to move beyond assumptions and consider what research and lived experience can tell us about creating sensory inclusive environments that work better for more people.

What Schools Can Learn From Healthcare Design

Professor Victoria Bates, from the University of Bristol, will share Sensory, a short film exploring autistic people's experiences of hospital care. The film was developed from real accounts gathered from East London NHS Foundation Trust staff and patients and was cast entirely with neurodivergent actors.

Although the setting is healthcare, the principles extend far beyond it. The project highlights the importance of designing environments with the people who use them, rather than making assumptions about what will work for them.

For schools, that raises an important question: how often do we involve students themselves in understanding what helps or hinders their participation? Whether we are thinking about a classroom, corridor, shared space or sensory safe space, co-production and lived experience can help us create environments that are genuinely more inclusive.

And There’s More Across the Programme

Beyond the sessions highlighted above, the Summit also explores supporting families of children with sensory integration differences, practical changes within the home, sensory-informed approaches to mental health, and inclusive design in maternity care.

Together, these sessions reinforce an important message: sensory inclusion cannot be considered within one setting alone. People move between home, education, healthcare and community spaces, and the environments around them can either support or create barriers to participation.

By bringing these different perspectives together, the Summit encourages us to think more broadly about what sensory inclusion means and what we can change across the environments people experience every day.

In Summary

• It's free.
• Sessions are pre-recorded, with seven days of access from 13 October — no need to watch live.
• You'll get a CPD certificate for attending.
• Everyone who registers is automatically entered into a prize draw for a free place on the Sensory Inclusion Facilitator Certificate, worth £395.

For school staff and other professionals supporting children and young people, the Sensory Inclusion Summit 2026 is an opportunity to hear directly from researchers, practitioners and people with lived experience, and to think about what sensory inclusion could look like in the environments you influence every day. 

Reserve your free place at the Sensory Inclusion Summit 2026 →