❝We would definitely tell others about the process. It gives us opportunities to connect with other like-minded organisations and reach a wider audience.❞

The Code Zone run online coding clubs for children between six and 16 years old. The focus is on learning through play, taking an activity that kids love (video games) and using it as a tool for learning.

Their child-led and person-centred approach to learning works well for many autistic children. They take great care to be versatile and offer reasonable adjustments, such as how we communicate with users and flexibility in what they want to focus on during the session.

Code Zone talks about adapting their child-led approach and receiving our Autism Inclusion Award.

Why did you register with the Autism Accreditation programme?

We registered in October of 2024, as we already had many autistic club members and wanted to ensure we were doing everything we could to support them. We have also received praise from many parents of autistic children and want to be able to provide our service to as many children as possible.

How did the framework help you to self-reflect and develop your accessibility for young autistic people?

The framework was useful for highlighting how we needed to formalise some processes.

We already did a very good job of gathering information, but we’ve since formalised and streamlined this, giving the children more opportunities to share their thoughts through the ‘passport’/support profile system.

Section two of the framework also got us thinking about what tech and text changes we could make to ensure the experience was as seamless as possible for users, such as adding a ‘calm mode’, more video chat controls and reducing non-literal language.

What changes have you implemented into your service as a result of the programme?

We introduced some changes to the onboarding process for when someone first registers to use the site. We added the support profile and added tags to members to ensure staff were able to know that a member was autistic at a glance. This centralised our information and gave our mentors the tools to provide specialised support for autistic individuals.

We also ran training sessions with mentors, focusing on communication with users. We already took a very child-led approach and were flexible with how we let children communicate. The training was there to give mentors the confidence to let children come to them on their own terms and highlight how important flexibility was.

Can you provide any anonymous positive outcomes for the autistic people you support as a result of the accreditation process?

We have multiple examples of users becoming more confident while in the clubs.

A parent has stated that their child very rarely speaks in public, but has, over time, become confident in talking about his game when showing it off at the end of sessions in our clubs. In turn, he has become more confident outside this space as well.

Another parent talked about how their child has found an interest that they can stick with. Their child has dropped previous hobbies quickly, but the child-led approach and lack of pressure have meant they’ve really engaged with this activity.

What does it mean to you to have achieved the Autism Inclusion Award kitemark?

We are extremely proud to have been awarded this accreditation. Our neurodiversity champion worked incredibly hard on this project, and we are very grateful to him, especially for his time and effort; it has made a big impact in the way that we support neurodivergent children.

We hope that this gives autistic children and their families the confidence to try coding with us. Starting something new can obviously be very stressful, so hopefully the accreditation can give them some confidence that we’ll do everything we can to support them.

What benefits do you see the programme having for other provisions like yourself, and would you recommend it to others?

We would definitely tell others about the process.

It gives us opportunities to connect with other like-minded organisations and reach a wider audience. Most importantly, it’s helped us reflect on our service and find ways to improve it for autistic children and their families.