Notes from Nici

The unbarrier blog.
Said out loud, then typed down.

Short thoughts, honest ones, full-length arguments, and stories from other people in this world. Writing is hard when you’re dyslexic. I still do it — with voice notes, AI, and a lot of rereading.

Out loud

Short. Said out loud first, typed second.

Reality check

A belief about SEND or inclusion, examined properly.

Honestly

The slower, truer ones. Allowed to be emotional.

Stories

Lived experience from people who get it.

Invitations

A door, gently opened. You’re welcome inside.

A menu nobody feels allowed to order from

12 Aug 2026· 5 min read

Universal Design for Learning is a promise of options. But a menu only works if you feel allowed to order from it — and that turns out to be a question about safety, not about software.

ordinarily available provision is now the law. most schools haven't caught up.

14 Jul 2026· 3 min read

the government has caught up on “ordinarily available provision.” now schools need to make sure their december strategies change classrooms, not just websites.

goodnotes education branding beside an ipad handwritten plant cell diagram, showing the app's classroom feedback view

installed, or embedded?

13 Jul 2026· 2 min read

goodnotes in schools works when it's embedded in strategy, pedagogy and workflow — not just installed. a free september readiness check-in for uk digital leads.

"collage from the edgu futurists uprising awards 2026 — nici on stage during the accessibility champion category, the shortlisted badge, and photos with colleagues at the invisible wind factory in liverpool."

i didn't win. i showed up anyway.

1 Jul 2026· 4 min read

i sat in a room in liverpool, shortlisted for an award i didn't win. here's why that night changed how loud i'm willing to be.

"a scrapbook-style journal page titled 'field notes, 01/07/2026' with folder tabs labelled 'the fog notes,' 'next step,' and 'honesty.' a sticky note reads 'fog is not failure, it's data' next to a polaroid of nici laughing outdoors. below, a cassette tape labelled 'summer mix '26 with gaz' sits beside a polaroid of feet up on a boat rail at sunset, clipped together with a binder clip holding a strip of beach photos. a barcode-style 'nici' label and the text 'unbarrier.me' sit at the bottom, with the line: 'i'm nici — dyslexic, adhd, and not interested in pretending otherwise. unbarrier is where the fog, the wins, and the in-between get written down honestly.'"

you were not empty. you were foggy.

26 Jun 2026· 4 min read

for weeks my ideas disappeared into nothing. here's what the fog was actually telling me — and the one thing i'm doing differently now.

"a dark purple graphic with the word 'avoidance' struck through in white, and 'processing' written below in spring green. underneath, five small clay figures shown mid-movement — standing, hunched, leaping, reaching, walking — illustrating a body moving through something. caption reads: 'it looks like getting stuck. it might be shame, working.'"

making things isn't avoidance. it's how you process emotion.

12 Jun 2026· 4 min read

the pull to make something when a feeling is big isn't avoidance. for a lot of neurodivergent people, making is how emotion actually gets processed.

A bright outdoor selfie of Nici taken from a low downward angle. She's smiling broadly, wearing white-framed mirrored sunglasses and a chunky grey wool jumper. Sunlight catches her face. To one side, a small ginger-brown dog walks along the leaf-strewn path beside her. The path is bordered by a tangle of green hedge. The reflection in her sunglasses shows the lane ahead.

I built Loop Breakers because I needed it

9 Jun 2026· 5 min read

I had this idea for six months. I kept getting stuck on the same thing — what if no one turns up? Here's why I built Loop Breakers anyway, and the room I'm trying to make.

The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth by Hilma af Klint, 1907 — a swirling abstract painting in soft pinks, oranges, yellows and teal. Hilma af Klint held her radical work back from the world for decades, leaving instructions for it to remain unseen until twenty years after her death. The image a neurodivergent woman might recognise as work that's ready, held quietly until its time.

Why you never launch (and what to do about it)

8 Jun 2026· 5 min read

You've had the idea for two years. You've tweaked it, parked it, explained it to three friends. That's the loop — and it isn't a character flaw. It's an ADHD brain doing exactly what it's wired to do. Here's what actually shifts it.

Nici Foote, founder of Unbarrier Education, sat in her car after a wet morning dog walk. Wet hair, no makeup, sunglasses pushed up on her head, wearing a green-and-yellow camo dryrobe. The honest face of an ADHD mum holding it all — tired, real, mid-reset.

The mum holding it all: ADHD, perimenopause, and the year nothing fitted anymore

29 May 2026· 6 min read

If you're an ADHD mum in your forties wondering why everything suddenly feels harder — your patch fell off, your brain went sideways, your business needs you — you're not failing. You're a woman holding too much in a body that just changed the rules.

A primary classroom mid-lesson. Children sit cross-legged on a blue carpet with hands raised, while at the back of the room a teacher and another adult work with a smaller group around a screen. Two layers of teaching happening in the same room.

England's classrooms are not Norway's. Yet.

20 May 2026· 5 min read

This week the Education Secretary pointed to Norway as the model for SEND reform. The ambition is right. The starting line is not. Here's what Norway actually built — and where England's two-tier workforce is holding the gap together.

An open EHCP document on a kitchen table, marked up with a highlighter — every vague word circled. The reality of what most SEND parents discover when they read the small print: a plan full of 'should' instead of 'must'.

The word "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting

14 May 2026· 6 min read

There's a single word doing more damage in SEND meetings than any other. Not budget. Not threshold. Should. The difference between a child getting support and not getting it often comes down to one word, and most parents don't know to fight for the right one.

A weathered wooden swing seat hanging empty in a garden, framed by roses and soft greenery in early morning light.

The Sunday spiral that wasn't about money: what ADHD coaching actually looks like

11 May 2026· 6 min read

A client messaged me on a Sunday, anxious about money. By the end of the session we'd worked out the spiral wasn't about money — and the anxiety wasn't quite the story she'd been told it was.

A figure with bright pink hair and an orange t-shirt floats freely through dark space, arms thrown back, surrounded by stars and a small ringed planet.

The system wasn't built for the 60% in the middle. I'm building it differently.

3 May 2026· 6 min read

Inclusion specialist Nici Foote on why the system fails the 60% in the middle — and how she works with schools, families and EdTech to fix it.

It's not just the workload — it's the constant switching, interruption, and responsibility. The real pressure is the mental load that builds throughout the day. The biggest shift comes from reducing that load and creating space to think.

It isn't the workload. It's the mental load.

1 May 2026· 2 min read

The School Business Leader Wellbeing Index 2026 is out. Page 48 is mine — and the real story isn't what most people think it is.

The letters A-D-H-D in bold orange on a black background, with each letter filled with a different childhood photograph of the author at various ages — from a small child waving at the camera, to a girl with a fringe poking her tongue out, to a teenager standing beside her grandmother in a coat.

I'm one of the 694%: why I keep saying I have ADHD out loud

15 Apr 2026· 5 min read

Recorded ADHD events among adult women aged 31–49 in the UK have risen by 694% over five years. The number is being used as proof of overdiagnosis. It's actually proof of something else. Here's why I keep saying I have ADHD out loud.