BES Force: Superheroes Advocating for Special Educational Needs Awareness

They appeared suddenly, equipped with cloaks and masks in yellow, red, green, and blue, in Piazza Santa Maria Liberatrice and the main squares of Testaccio. They introduced themselves as BES Force, superheroes in search of new strengths to fight evil. And the evil is the lack of attention towards Special Educational Needs. They proposed a test to passersby to discover who had the superpower of 'super creativity', who was 'hyper focused' and who instead possessed 'pixel vision' or 'extra energy', all metaphors for the main characteristics of those with special educational needs. The initiative, conceived by a group of students from the European Institute of Design in Rome, aims to raise public awareness on the issues related to ADHD and DSA categories. 'We want to highlight how difficult it is to feel truly understood and supported, during one's education, when one has these disorders'. In fact, despite the existence of regulation 170/2010, there is still no national law capable of countering the profound discrepancy that exists at the regional level and that weighs on the possibility of offering effective support during the study path. As proof of this, in Southern Italy, it is an underestimated phenomenon and the percentage of diagnoses is only around 1.6%. It is with these premises that the B.E.S. FORCE invites the population to inform themselves on the topic and to support the initiative through the petition 'Together for the rights of people with DSA and ADHD', launched on the change.org portal and also present on the Instagram profile @besforceheroes.