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Autism through talent
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Hans Bruintjes
I think it would be beneficial for students to better understand their talents and limitations, and also learn how to discuss them with others.
HANS BRUINTJES
Hans Bruintjes was diagnosed with autism at three. He grew up in special education in the Netherlands, with therapy fitted in around school hours. Some of it worked. He remembers teachers who paid attention - one of them he later nominated for a national award.
The trouble started when he tried to move forward. He finished pre-vocational secondary school in 2015 and wanted to continue to HAVO, a secondary-school level in the Netherlands that prepares students for a university of applied sciences.
He looked at vocational schools too, as a backup. Several turned him down. They said he wasn't suited to the school, or the profession, or that they couldn't give him the guidance he'd need.
In 2016, he and his parents visited a specialized vocational school built for students who had left mainstream education. The intake coordinator told him to drop HAVO. Higher education, he said, carried no obligation to support him the way this school could. After a string of rejections, Hans took the advice.
The assessment that followed is one he still describes well. It looked at what he liked doing, what he was good at, what kind of guidance helped him, and what conditions let him function. There were conversations, and there were tasks - physical ones, practical ones. He preferred being watched doing something to being asked whether he was good at it.
"Questions about whether I'm good at things always made me uncomfortable," he wrote later. "When is something good enough to be considered good?"
The recommendation was sign maker training, along with support for social skills, coping, asking questions, and job interviews.
The internship was harder. His supervisor answered mistakes with long, angry lectures. When Hans asked for a calmer approach, he says he was told: "The world isn't going to adapt to you." His health got worse, the work got harder, and he later recognized the burnout for what it was, though not at the time. His father pushed back against the idea that Hans was just being difficult. When the people around him followed the guidance that had been worked out for him, he managed. When those arrangements quietly stopped, the same problems came back.
The internship ended in 2018. Hans stayed home for four months, then found production work at a company that often hires people who struggle to enter the labor market elsewhere. The expectations were clear, the manager was friendly, and he got along with his colleagues. He stayed three years. Living with his parents also meant he could save - including money for tutoring, for whenever he went back to school.
He still wanted to study. He went back to the same specialized school and asked for another assessment. This time the answer was different: study law from home, and look toward advisory work.
Hans started a law degree in 2019.
By then politics already mattered to him. He'd joined a political party in 2018 and was writing long posts about education, discrimination, autism, and the labor market. He didn't tell new political contacts that he was autistic right away - it felt safer to let people get to know him first. Social media turned out to be useful for something else too: it gave him somewhere to talk about the things he cared about, and it connected him with people who cared about the same things.
In 2019, Hans presented a petition to Members of Parliament calling for higher education to be made more accessible to autistic students.
He looked at vocational schools too, as a backup. Several turned him down. They said he wasn't suited to the school, or the profession, or that they couldn't give him the guidance he'd need.
In 2016, he and his parents visited a specialized vocational school built for students who had left mainstream education. The intake coordinator told him to drop HAVO. Higher education, he said, carried no obligation to support him the way this school could. After a string of rejections, Hans took the advice.
The assessment that followed is one he still describes well. It looked at what he liked doing, what he was good at, what kind of guidance helped him, and what conditions let him function. There were conversations, and there were tasks - physical ones, practical ones. He preferred being watched doing something to being asked whether he was good at it.
"Questions about whether I'm good at things always made me uncomfortable," he wrote later. "When is something good enough to be considered good?"
The recommendation was sign maker training, along with support for social skills, coping, asking questions, and job interviews.
The internship was harder. His supervisor answered mistakes with long, angry lectures. When Hans asked for a calmer approach, he says he was told: "The world isn't going to adapt to you." His health got worse, the work got harder, and he later recognized the burnout for what it was, though not at the time. His father pushed back against the idea that Hans was just being difficult. When the people around him followed the guidance that had been worked out for him, he managed. When those arrangements quietly stopped, the same problems came back.
The internship ended in 2018. Hans stayed home for four months, then found production work at a company that often hires people who struggle to enter the labor market elsewhere. The expectations were clear, the manager was friendly, and he got along with his colleagues. He stayed three years. Living with his parents also meant he could save - including money for tutoring, for whenever he went back to school.
He still wanted to study. He went back to the same specialized school and asked for another assessment. This time the answer was different: study law from home, and look toward advisory work.
Hans started a law degree in 2019.
By then politics already mattered to him. He'd joined a political party in 2018 and was writing long posts about education, discrimination, autism, and the labor market. He didn't tell new political contacts that he was autistic right away - it felt safer to let people get to know him first. Social media turned out to be useful for something else too: it gave him somewhere to talk about the things he cared about, and it connected him with people who cared about the same things.
In 2019, Hans presented a petition to Members of Parliament calling for higher education to be made more accessible to autistic students.
In 2021, a local politician who had been reading his posts asked him to come on as an adviser. They set out clear agreements about what he was responsible for, and Hans says that clarity is what let him do the job well. In 2022 he did an internship in the Dutch Parliament - preparing debates, written questions, motions - and gave colleagues a presentation on the problems autistic people run into in education, work, and public policy.
Somewhere in that work he noticed a gap. Government reports on discrimination barely mentioned neurodivergent people. Policymakers were relying on research that had left a whole set of experiences out.
His bachelor's thesis examined the extent to which Dutch education laws comply with the obligations set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He was inspired to write it by the advice he received not to pursue higher education, and by the fact that a legislative proposal came into effect in 2014 with the aim of placing more children in mainstream education - even though the mainstream system was not equipped for this (a concern raised by many teachers, including those at his school, during major protests).
For bachelor's thesis, he surveyed 459 neurodivergent people about discrimination. People wrote back with things his questions hadn't asked about. He kept going. A second survey reached 631 people.
His bachelor's thesis examined the extent to which Dutch education laws comply with the obligations set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He was inspired to write it by the advice he received not to pursue higher education, and by the fact that a legislative proposal came into effect in 2014 with the aim of placing more children in mainstream education - even though the mainstream system was not equipped for this (a concern raised by many teachers, including those at his school, during major protests).
For bachelor's thesis, he surveyed 459 neurodivergent people about discrimination. People wrote back with things his questions hadn't asked about. He kept going. A second survey reached 631 people.
Science Conference 2026 - ND Pride Science
That work became a book, The Voice of the Neurodivergent, published in 2026, on discrimination in education, employment, healthcare, and contact with government. He's now a researcher at Utrecht University's Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance.
He's also taken the research into practice. He founded NeuroVacant, a job platform meant to connect neurodivergent applicants with employers who are upfront about accessibility and working conditions. He's also worked on SpectrumAssist, which grew out of conversations about how hard it can be to find support that actually fits what a person needs.
One thing runs through his own account of all this: people need to understand how they work - what they can do, what matters to them, which environments let them function, how to say what they need. His own history gives that a particular weight. Two assessments, years apart, looked at the same person and came back with two different answers. The first pointed him toward sign making. The second pointed him toward law.
The difficulty hasn't stopped. In 2026 he quit a premaster in public law after finding that keeping up with the way the university expected him to study cost more than he had, and was wearing down his health. He decided to put his energy into research, NeuroVacant, SpectrumAssist, and his other work, while he looks for a different way toward the degree he still wants.
He's also started saying something slightly different about that 2016 advice. For years, he explained that continuing his education had been hard because of his autism. Now he adds: "or rather, the inaccessibility of education."
The systems that once decided what looked realistic for him are the same ones he studies now - what happens when rules and procedures and expectations meet one actual life, and what has to be understood before anyone makes a decision about someone else's future.
One thing runs through his own account of all this: people need to understand how they work - what they can do, what matters to them, which environments let them function, how to say what they need. His own history gives that a particular weight. Two assessments, years apart, looked at the same person and came back with two different answers. The first pointed him toward sign making. The second pointed him toward law.
The difficulty hasn't stopped. In 2026 he quit a premaster in public law after finding that keeping up with the way the university expected him to study cost more than he had, and was wearing down his health. He decided to put his energy into research, NeuroVacant, SpectrumAssist, and his other work, while he looks for a different way toward the degree he still wants.
He's also started saying something slightly different about that 2016 advice. For years, he explained that continuing his education had been hard because of his autism. Now he adds: "or rather, the inaccessibility of education."
The systems that once decided what looked realistic for him are the same ones he studies now - what happens when rules and procedures and expectations meet one actual life, and what has to be understood before anyone makes a decision about someone else's future.
