How it's judged

The Learning Disability and Autism Leaders’ List is judged by autistic people and people who have learning disabilities. Most, if not all, of our judges are previous Leaders.

There are 2 judges per category, that’s 8 judges in total. In addition to this there is also a mediator judge. This is somebody who can help make sure judging is fair or select winners where there are finalists with the same number of points.

Dimensions reads all of the entries and shortlists them. The people who are shortlisted become our Finalists and their stories, photos and videos are sent to the judges.

The judges for each category rank the shortlisted stories in order of preference, assigning them a position, which convert to points: most points (first place) to one point (last place). They can receive support to do this and must tell us if they know someone who has entered so the mediator judge can check their scores.

The judges will send their scores to Dimensions and the highest scoring stories become our Leaders!

Choosing the Leaders

Dimensions will use the scores to find out who the Learning Disability and Autism Leaders are for 2023/2024.

If there are any tied places (people with the same score in the same category) the mediating judge will choose which story wins.

2023/2024’s Leaders will be told. This is confidential and we will ask them not to tell anybody.