Do autistic people, with our tendency to desire structure, to construct black and white models of the world, to miss or misread subtext and social elements of our interaction result in us being more likely to have competency, rule based conceptions of information literacy? Do the ways in which we experience social understanding, achieve tacit understanding in our work or study environments, even physically interact with the world affect our information literacy?

Autistics and dyspraxics tend to have what is often phrased as “bottom up” thinking, in contrast to “top down” thinking in neurotypicals. We collect detail, chase small elements of information, then build them into wider networks of information to make sense of the world, to build new knowledge. It’s a process of making connections, associating separate facts to extract meaning. Neurotypicals are often more comfortable with a more linear thought process and don’t feel the need to build the same mental networks of connected information. Does the way in which some of us build networks of knowledge and others happily function with smaller pieces of disconnected information mean that one group of people may be more information literate than another? Probably not, but perhaps it means we are information literate in different ways.

Dyslexic people often think in very visual ways, whereas others have aphantasia with minimal mental images so are more likely to think in terms of text, or speech. Where are the models of information literacy that take into account the senses through which we experience and process the information we consume? Someone with clear mental images will surely privilege visual information when constructing meaning, in a way that is largely inaccessible to those who have minimal or zero mental images.

Neurodivergent people, whether in the workplace, education, or social situations also have additional information processing demands in interpreting unclear instructions, navigating informal communication, and managing sensory information alongside textual and digital sources. Being information literate in this context is not about passively receiving information, but about actively translating, filtering, and reconstructing it in order to function effectively. Information is encountered through social, physical, and epistemic modalities rather than solely through formal documents or systems. Neurodivergent experiences make these dimensions particularly visible, exposing how much information work depends on implicit norms, informal communication, and environmental tolerance.

The existing literature barely touches on these types of differences between different neurotypes and information literacy. We’re more likely to find research on information skills teaching, or general accessibility in libraries than anything related to how neurodivergent people may experience information literacy differently. Even within the very limited existing literature the focus tends to be on autism, rather than attempting to cover a wider range of neurotypes with all their complex possibilities and interactions.

This all suggests obvious gaps in information literacy research, gaps related not just to theoretical conceptions in information literacy, how one might become more information literate and what it mean to be so, but also in social justice. Do the ways in which we teach information skills, attempting to help people develop their information literacy, favour certain neurotypes over others? Are we holding back some people, already hindered by societal norms, by trying to force them into our perceptions of information literacy?

We could start to address these things by research into conceptions of information literacy within groups not dominated by neurotypicals. By building ideas of how autistics, ADHDers, dyslexics may be information literate in ways that differ from societal average ways, from existing research that may, by default, favour neurotypical conceptions.

To be valid and effective, we also need understanding of our research subjects, centring neurodivergent researchers in the process. The barriers we hear described by autistic librarians are not neutral. Unwritten rules, reliance on informal verbal communication, and sensory‑overloading environments function as gatekeeping mechanisms, distributing opportunity unevenly without being recognised as information issues.

This connects information literacy directly to questions of power, access, and justice. Information literacy is not only about finding or evaluating information, but about having equitable opportunities to participate, contribute, and belong. Thinking about Information Literacy as a discipline for the future means moving beyond tidy frameworks and towards messy, lived realities.

For IL to develop in ways that are sustainable and relevant, it must engage seriously with lived experience, particularly from those whose perspectives expose the limits of dominant models. Doing so gives Information Literacy greater depth, honesty, and a stronger ethical foundation. The future of IL depends not only on what we teach, but on whose experiences shape our understanding.