Why dis + ADVANTAGE™? Disability, Tic Disorder, Business, and Better Event Experiences

What happens when the event planner does not know what to ask? What happens when an entrepreneur’s disability, tic disorder, or sensory experiences affect how they network, market, travel, speak, work, or participate in a room? What happens when a person has the expertise but the environment keeps adding unnecessary friction?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: Why are we waiting until someone asks for an accommodation to start thinking?

Most people do not set out to create inaccessible experiences.

The event planner is focused on the venue, registration, speakers, food, sponsors, photography, and the approximately 647 things that can go wrong before lunch. The entrepreneur is trying to serve clients, make money, market the business, and remain visible. The organization may even have an accessibility statement somewhere on its website.

Everyone means well.

Then a real person enters the room.

That person may need to know whether flash photography will be used. They may need a quiet space, early seating, a clear schedule, an alternative way to check in, or permission to step away and return without becoming the unofficial intermission.

None of those needs makes the person less capable of contributing. Yet when access has not been considered in advance, the person must spend time explaining, requesting, negotiating, and hoping.

That is unnecessary friction.

That is also why dis + ADVANTAGE™ exists at the intersection of disability, business, and better event experiences.

When the question became personal

My understanding of access changed when I became the person wondering whether the room had been designed with someone like me in mind.

I received an adult diagnosis of a tic disorder after I had already built a career, taught others, spoken internationally, and established expertise in traditional marketing and live experiences. My motor tics and vocal tics did not arrive with the diagnosis. The diagnosis gave language to something my body had already been doing.

The diagnosis did not erase any of that.

I was still the same strategist. I still knew how to build an event. I still had ideas, experience, discernment, and something valuable to contribute. I simply had a name for something my body had been doing.

Then I attended a conference created for meeting and event professionals. I disclosed my needs in advance. I did what people are routinely told to do: communicate, prepare, and ask. Still, the experience exposed the distance between saying a space is inclusive and designing one that works in practice.

That experience did not make me think we needed another inspirational message about overcoming adversity. We have plenty of those.

It made me think we needed better questions, better information, and better design.

The name is the message

The dis represents disability.

The ADVANTAGE represents everything that exists alongside it: expertise, creativity, experience, knowledge, perspective, leadership, discernment, systems, and ways of thinking. This is not an attempt to rename disability as a superpower. Disability does not need a cape before the person living with it can be respected.

It is a statement that disability is not the opposite of expertise.

A person can live with a disability and be ambitious. A person can tic and lead. A person can need a quiet room and command the main stage. A person can communicate differently and still be the sharpest thinker at the table. A person can ask for access without asking anyone to lower the standard.

The disability is present.

So is the advantage.

We are not a small population

Disability is often treated like a specialized topic for a tiny group somewhere along the edge of the audience. The numbers tell a different story.

The CDC estimates that more than one in four adults in the United States lives with a disability. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that people with disabilities represented approximately 13 percent of the civilian noninstitutional population in 2025. Those figures use different surveys and definitions, so they should not be treated as interchangeable. Both make one point clear: people living with disabilities are already in our workplaces, businesses, audiences, and event rooms. They are not a hypothetical group we might encounter one day. CDC U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Neurodivergence is also broader than many people realize. Estimates commonly suggest that 15 to 20 percent of the population is neurodivergent.

That number requires context. Neurodivergent is an umbrella term, not a single diagnosis, and there is no official neurodivergent census. Estimates vary depending on which neurological differences are included, such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, tic disorder and Tourette syndrome, and OCD.

The range still helps us understand the scale. A significant portion of the population moves through systems built around one assumed way of concentrating, communicating, processing information, responding to sensory input, and participating.

That includes adults who were diagnosed later in life. It includes adults who have never received a formal diagnosis. It also includes people who have become very skilled at looking fine while using an extraordinary amount of energy to remain in the room.

People are working, but work is not working equally

People living with disabilities are employees, entrepreneurs, consultants, speakers, creators, executives, event professionals, clients, and customers.

They are also navigating measurable inequities.

In 2025, 38.1 percent of working-age people with disabilities, ages 16 to 64, were employed. Across the full adult population, the employment rate was 22.8 percent for people with disabilities and 65.2 percent for people without disabilities.

The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 8.3 percent. That was twice the 4.1 percent rate for people without disabilities. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Among people who were employed:

• Approximately 30 percent of workers with disabilities worked part time, compared with about 17 percent of workers without disabilities.

• Workers with disabilities were less represented in management and professional occupations.

• People with disabilities were more likely to be self-employed, at 9.1 percent compared with 5.9 percent of people without disabilities.

That final number deserves more attention.

Entrepreneurship can create agency. It can allow someone to design a schedule, environment, workload, communication style, client journey, or business model that works with their life. This is why disability business resources cannot stop at encouragement. Entrepreneurs need practical guidance for marketing, events, communication, access, and sustainable participation.

It can also leave neurodivergent entrepreneurs trying to build businesses with marketing systems that were not designed for how they work. They may be told that success requires constant visibility, endless content, loud networking rooms, back-to-back calls, frequent travel, or a performance of professionalism that leaves no room for disability.

The pay story matters too. Analyses of U.S. earnings repeatedly show that workers with disabilities earn less than workers without disabilities. For some workers, the inequity is written directly into policy. Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act still allows approved employers to pay certain workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage. A proposal to phase out those certificates was withdrawn by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2025. U.S. Department of Labor

We cannot celebrate inclusion in the brochure while ignoring participation, advancement, and pay.

Tic disorder and Tourette syndrome rarely travel alone

My entry into this work is tic disorder, but tic disorder is often not the only condition a person is navigating. People may be searching for answers about ADHD and tic disorder, anxiety alongside tics, or the connection between obsessive compulsive disorder and tics. Those questions deserve clear information that acknowledges the whole person.

CDC data show that approximately 83 percent of children diagnosed with Tourette syndrome also have another mental, behavioral, or developmental condition. More than one-third of people with Tourette syndrome also have OCD. ADHD, anxiety, learning differences, sleep difficulties, and other conditions may also occur alongside Tourette syndrome and persistent tic disorders. CDC: Data and Statistics on Tourette Syndrome

That 83 percent statistic is based on U.S. children ages 6 to 17. We should not quietly turn childhood data into an adult statistic simply because it makes a clean sentence.

Many of the strongest population studies focus on children, yet adults do not disappear when a research chart stops at age 17. Tourette syndrome begins in childhood, but not everyone’s tics disappear. The CDC notes that many people experience tics into adulthood and, for some, tics can become worse.

Adults take those bodies and brains to work. They build businesses. They attend conferences. They travel. They lead teams. They get on stages. Their motor tics or vocal tics may be visible, audible, intermittent, or easy for others to miss. They sit beneath flashing lights while someone says, “It will only take a second.” They are often expected to explain each condition separately, even when those conditions interact with one another.

Around here, we will say that one condition commonly occurs alongside another.

We are not using language that makes a person sound like a collection of diagnoses sharing a trench coat.

Serious topic. Still not solemn.

Access should not begin with a public emergency

The traditional approach to access often begins after friction appears.

Someone discloses a disability. Someone requests an accommodation. Someone else decides what can be arranged. Then everyone hopes the solution works.

dis + ADVANTAGE™ begins earlier.

What information can be provided before arrival? What choices can be built into registration? How will photography and flash work? Is there a quiet space? Can someone enter early? Is the schedule clear? Are there multiple ways to participate? Have speakers been told what to expect? Have the event’s sensory experiences been considered before people arrive? Can a person make an informed decision without handing over their complete medical history?

This is the heart of IDEA+™ and the ART Framework:

Anticipation. Remove Friction. Thoughtful Design.

Anticipation does not mean guessing what every person needs. That would be impossible and exhausting.

It means thinking early enough to provide useful information, meaningful choices, and multiple paths to participation. It gives people agency before a need becomes a public production.

Who dis + ADVANTAGE™ is for

dis + ADVANTAGE™ is for the event planner who genuinely wants to design a better experience but has never been taught what thoughtful access looks like beyond a checklist.

It is for the neurodivergent entrepreneur building a business without copying systems that fight the way they work. It is for the advocate who needs credible research, practical resources, and language that can move a conversation forward.

This work primarily centers people living with Tourette syndrome and tic disorders while welcoming the broader disability community. We will talk about events, entrepreneurship, marketing, speaking, communication, sensory experience, access, pay, and professional participation.

There will be research. There will be stories. There will be practical tools.

There may occasionally be a tic at an inconvenient moment because my tics did not consult my content calendar.

What there will not be is a requirement to become so serious that we lose focus on how important education and humanization is for this topic.

Why now?

People living with disabilities should not have to choose between access and ambition.

Event planners deserve more than vague instructions to “be inclusive.” Entrepreneurs deserve resources that acknowledge how disability can shape business without reducing the business owner to a diagnosis. Advocates deserve evidence they can turn into action.

Professional spaces should not make looking nondisabled the price of admission.

dis + ADVANTAGE™ does not center disability as the only thing worth knowing about a person. It centers the person. Their work. Their expertise. Their agency. Their contribution. Their full experience.

That is the reason for the plus sign.

Disability is part of the story.

It is not the end of the sentence.

Welcome to dis + ADVANTAGE™.