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Reading atypical eye contact or body language as disinterest, rudeness, or disengagement.
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Changing a room, time, or format at short notice without warning.
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Calling on a student to speak unexpectedly, without prior notice.
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Focusing only on difficulties while ignoring recognised strengths such as focus, memory, or attention to detail.
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Assuming reduced social interaction means a student does not want to connect with peers.
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Treating a single accommodation as sufficient without considering the wider academic, social, and sensory picture.
In Practice — A last-minute room change
An autistic student (a composite, illustrative example) who had been managing a module well became visibly distressed and left a session when it was relocated at short notice to an unfamiliar room, with no advance explanation.
What helped: the tutor followed up privately after the session rather than addressing it in front of the group, explained clearly in writing what had caused the change and why, and — going forward — agreed to always flag room changes by message as soon as they were known, even when the change itself seemed minor to other students.
The lesson: the distress was not disproportionate to the actual disruption; it was disproportionate to the lack of warning. The fix cost almost nothing and prevented the same problem recurring for the rest of the module.