A research series by Mark Friese
Broken by Design
This is a series about systems that don't work. Not because they're under-resourced or badly managed — though they often are — but because the assumptions built into their design produce predictable harm for neurodivergent and disabled people.
The harm isn't a failure of the system. It's an output.
The Framework
Five pieces. One descending system.
The series traces a single mechanism across five stages. Institutions encounter a permanent condition and apply a temporary illness model. When the person doesn't recover on schedule, patience erodes and the person compensates by masking. The masking succeeds — which confirms the institution's belief that the problem was temporary. Meanwhile the conditions compound, the costs accumulate, and the system that was supposed to help has no mechanism to correct itself.
Each cycle is worse than the last. The system doesn't repeat. It deteriorates.
The Compassion Gap
Why we accommodate some disabilities and punish others.
The Competence Trap
Survival strategies developed to navigate hostile systems become evidence you don't need support. Your competence disqualifies you.
Measured by Neglect
How employers fail to support neurodivergent staff, then punish them for the gap they created.
The Accountability Gap
Ombudsmen, regulators, and tribunals reproduce the same barriers they're supposed to remedy. The spiral has no brake.
↻ Each cycle starts from a worse baseline. The system has no corrective mechanism.
Also in the series
The Same Story, Told Three Ways
Education, employment, and insurance fail disabled people using the same structure — the same legal framework, the same implementation gap, the same regulatory inaction. It's not three problems. It's one problem with three addresses.
Full Research
The Compassion Gap — White Paper
UK Disability Policy vs Practice
The complete evidence base behind the series. A research paper examining equal accommodation of invisible disabilities across education and employment, integrating neuroscience, nervous system physiology, multi-morbidity mortality data, UK exclusion statistics, and evidence-based interventions. Revised March 2026 with updated neuroscience, new experimental evidence on disability-type accommodation judgments, and strengthened multi-morbidity data.
Follow the research
New pieces and updates delivered to your inbox. No spam, no algorithms, unsubscribe anytime.
Powered by Substack
About
Mark Friese MEng MIET
Researcher and writer — Auchterarder, Scotland
Mark is a neurodivergent researcher, writer, and advocate based in Auchterarder. He writes at the intersection of academic research, policy analysis, and lived experience — examining how UK systems create, sustain, and fail to remedy disadvantage for neurodivergent and disabled people.
The Broken by Design series draws on academic research, legal analysis, regulatory complaints, and primary source evidence from navigating the systems it describes. It argues that the outcomes experienced by neurodivergent and disabled people are not failures of individual systems but predictable consequences of design choices — and that design choices can be changed.