Why so much hostility toward reasonable adjustments for autistic/ADHD students/workers?

[KeenTaupeDog]

I keep seeing backlash whenever someone with autism/ADHD asks for reasonable adjustments. Things like:
• being accused of cheating or getting “special treatment”
• people assuming you're lying or gaming the system
• resentment for accommodations that simply level the playing field

Why do so many people react this way?
Is it ignorance about what these conditions actually mean?
Envy?
Fear that fairness is “zero-sum”?
Or something deeper around stigma toward invisible disabilities?

Would be interested in honest perspectives — especially from those who’ve witnessed or experienced this dynamic.

If you dont think adhders etc. should be employed if they cant stay in work due to their adhd, then are you happy with them sitting at home and claiming benefits? Or dying of hunger?

Not looking to fight — just trying to understand where this reaction comes from.
Am a apsergers sufferer and people at uni accused me of cheating when they found out i had remote exams

I think all the reasons you say.

I do think that 'reasonable accommodations' is a finely balanced topic.
e.g.
One person being allowed to not do the phone answering part of a job can mean that others have to do it more, and they may not like that.
One person being allowed extra breaks away from the 'shop floor' may leave others feeling overloaded, or may lead to the perception they are doing less work (even if maybe they have slightly longer hours to accommodate more rest breaks).

If you dont think adhders etc. should be employed if they cant stay in work due to their adhd, then are you happy with them sitting at home and claiming benefits?

This is a very valid point. Either accommodations have to be accepted, or we have to accept people not working.

I'd rather my own DD worked in a suitable job with slight accommodations than didn't work at all.

I'm autistic / aspergers and getting part time work as a reasonable adjustments was a battle. I wanted a 4 day week, with a day off in the middle. My employer pushed back due to difficulties employing a one day role. I pushed back as I was exhausted and could not continue without the mid week break. I did get the requested adjustment but it was a battle.

But the people working less hrs than peers due to their disabilities might be paid less? so why complain? and the person not answering the phone might do more of other stuff to make up for not spending time there

There is very little understanding about the difficulties that neurodiverse people can have when they are able to function as normal. Things like sensory overload, overwhelm, difficulty with focus or organisation are symptoms that most people experience from time to time, so when people are getting special adjustments to accommodate those things, it can come across as unfair. Especially when the accommodations are things that other people think they would benefit from too.

I’m all for reasonable adjustments because I have people in my family that need them, but I think companies can mismanage the way they implement them. When people object to adjustments that have no effect on them then they are just being ignorant and unkind, but when adjustments increase other people’s workloads because employers don’t manage them properly, complaints can be justified.

I am with you OP. I just don't get the negativity around reasonable adjustments.

Usually those are the same people who get agitated about disabled people getting benefits.

So we can't win: we are criticised for asking for reasonable adjustments so we can work and criticised if we need to claim benefits because workplaces can be so inflexible and unwelcoming of people with disabilities.

I think a lot of it is pure ignorance, envy and also people buying into the daft disabled ''scroungers'' rhetoric that the right wing media and some politicians are happily pushing.

But the people working less hrs than peers due to their disabilities might be paid less? so why complain? and the person not answering the phone might do more of other stuff to make up for not spending time there

Other people don't know the pay of others.
Other people might not like answering the phone (even though capable) and prefer the other stuff.
Other people might find the balance of their own job is impacted negatively due to adjustments of a new person.

I think provided the person is in a job which at its core is suitable then adjustments around the edge make sense. But the impact on others needs to at least be recognised and acknowledged by management.

I think it comes from the similarity of people in the same workplace and that things are relative. I'm dyslexic but sometimes find my spelling, grammar and reading ability is higher than non-dyslexic colleagues, but I get extra time and specialist software and they don't. I don't think anyone means that people who are unable to work or interact with others due to their ND and learning difficulties, and learning disabilities shouldn't get support. But once you've all passed the same interviews and got the same qualifications and experience it can be hard to discover someone else gets something that would help you too.

I think a lot of tension is because a lot of the reasonable adjustments tend to be things that most people would actually want to benefit from, regardless of neurodiversity. The difference is the degree of 'need' for them, but it's easy to see where the tension comes from.

So not doing parts of the job they find particularly stressful, or having extra breaks, or working from home more, are things that all of us would like. There's also questions sometimes of want vs need, which can (doesn't always) make people seem a little entitled sometimes...

For example, an autistic woman posted on a Facebook group I'm on about a particular theme park. She mentioned how much she really enjoys the theme park and how she was able to go and lots of rides. Then she found out about the queues skipper disabled access system (A very important system for those that need it, and one that my child uses due to disability), and she wondered whether a letter from her GP stating that she was 'unable to queue ' would be sufficient. Except she'd literally just come back from a trip there where she'd queued fine - saying how short they were. It doesn't promote the feeling that people are being treated equally.

Basically it's very difficult to separate the the nice the haves from the necessary. It's no different when childfree people are denied flexible working opportunities the parents are given, even though they may well have their own challenges or caring responsibilities.

Because the vast majority of people are ableist to those who suffer from any kind of hidden illness or condition - they will never admit it though.

I have autism. I also excellent at masking and, on the surface, appear to be high-functioning - I have a degree, I run a business, I’m married and I drive. I can also maintain a few friendships.

What people don’t see are the meltdowns because it’s windy or raining. They don’t see me coming home from work and shutting down for an hour or two so I can decompress. They don’t see me being unable to socialise or travel on public transport, or go to a supermarket. They don’t see how a change in my routine leads me getting so upset that I often just go to bed.

And ultimately, they don’t care about me or about anyone else like me. They think I need to grow up, or get a grip, or just “deal with it like everyone else”. Because on the outside, I look just like them, and they don’t understand that means absolutely fuck all, really.

I think as with so many things, the discourse online is highly polarized with people on both ends of the debate taking quite extreme and aggressive stances and the reality out in the real world is both more moderate and more kind. I work in HR and the vast majority of the time adjustments get made pretty undramatically and unconententiously, and everyone rubs along more or less OK. But obviously the more extreme examples (which are definitely a minority) either of employees asking for/needing really quite extreme and hard/expensive to implement type of adjustments with a major negative impact on colleagues OR managers/colleagues being hugely unreasonable and refusing to change even minor things about their work arrangements to accommodate disability adjustments are far more likely to get talked about publicly/online and make it seem as though the whole system is totally broken and skewed one way or the other.

I also think our current set up of disability protection legislation is starting to look quite outdated. I've been around long enough to remember the disability discrimination act and the equalities act coming in, and certainly neither was written with the current huge surge of the adult workforce have a diagnosed neurodiversity in mind. Not to say that these conditions aren't real and the people with them weren't out there back then, they were but people were presumably either self-selecting or being limited to roles they could manage within their condition, or just muddling along/coping/not coping without the formal adjustments mechanisms and protections. 90% of the adjustments requests back when the legislation was new were for physical adaptations to the workplace or the purchase of equipment, and the type of workload adjustments (part-time working, work pattern adjustments) were usually in relation to a physical condition with clear and easily understood symptoms - not that that made everything easy of course but I just think it's been a huge and rapid shift towards the understanding of neurodivergence and invisible disabilities more generally and we could probably use some better guidance from government on how employers should be managing, particularly small employers where it's so much harder to say let someone not do a substantial element of the job they were employed for, even if you pay them less it's not easy to then just find someone else to do that...

They might, but they might not.

Not all employers handle reasonable adjustments well. It's a fine balance and often ends up causing unfairness somewhere, often to the person who needs the adjustments and sometimes for the people who don't. I think the group who most often miss out are people who could probably do with some adjustments because they're struggling, but don't have a diagnoses/consider themselves eligible for an adjustment.

I have a physical disability.

i’ve had a lot of problems getting reasonable adjustments at work and also out and about.

even lift access, which is an obvious need (I use a wheelchair) can be very difficult.

It boils down to this, as another poster pointed out.

A lot of tension is because a lot of the reasonable adjustments tend to be things that most people would actually want to benefit from, regardless of neurodiversity.

but what if your colleague also doesn't like answering the phone.... Why should they answer it more because you 'cant' answer it due to your autism/disability.

When adjustments start negatively impacting other peoples jobs, its when the problems arise.

I am at the very beginning of some sorts of discussions I’m going to need to have with my employers. I am mid-50s and teach. Before that I have had jobs where I have just ended up completely failing. I have autism and adhd. Fucking clear to me and those around me. I have never thought I needed diagnosis, as I’ve survived (😳) until now. But that survival has been HARD. I now work part time only. I say only. Due to nature of job it is more like full time anyway and I still am NOT coping. I finally (!!!!) submitted my application for asc (not d!) and adhd this week… having had them lingering for months and months… Mainly because I feel I’m going to need some protection and adjustments.
tbc…

What makes you think someone with adhd/autism might be able to answer the phone if they say they can't?
Would you be saying the same thing to a dyslexic colleague who doesnt write emails bc they cant?

@TeenToTwenties

But the impact on others needs to at least be recognised and acknowledged by management.

Nail on the head there. Likewise with maternity leave, parental leave, (even summer/xmas holidays for parents), there is often ill feeling that other staff are unfairly required/expected to pick up the slack. That's definitely a management problem. There should be no impact on other staff - management should ensure that adequate cover is engaged and/or a "reasonable" adjustment doesn't adversely impact another worker.

It’s a tricky balance between supporting one group and not putting additional burdens on others. For example, I have ADHD and bipolar disorder. I don’t usually need any adjustments but if someone else’s adjustments gave me extra organising to do, or extra conflict resolution to deal with, that would seriously affect me. I would be at a high risk of burnout. Then I would suddenly need reasonable adjustments. Or I’d end up off sick.

One person’s reasonable adjustments can impact others negatively. My conditions are just as serious as other people’s. It seems that the assumption of people demanding lots of barely-reasonable adjustments that impact others is that they are the only disabled person in the village and usually they are not. And even if they are, no one wants to take a job only to discover their coworker gets all the best bits because it’s “all they can do” and shirks the bits they don’t like because they “can’t do it”. It does make people raise an eyebrow. I think people need self awareness to get jobs they can do and are suited for. So it’s very tricky to balance it fairly for everyone.

Because the work load doesn’t decrease if you have someone in your team suffers from mental health issues. I have one in my team and we have reasonable adjustments which means he takes longer to do his tasks and he goes off on sick leave often. I’m not allowed to complain as it’s met with you must make allowance. In teams performance and delivery reviews, he is counted as one full headcount, and so it means everyone must do more. As a lead, I love having one or two high performers in the team. They make it so much easier to deliver the work. If I don’t deliver it counts as a red mark against me. I have worked extra hours to get things done to meet deadlines.

Autism isn’t a problem. Many high performing engineers are on the spectrum. It is when the adjustment means the team member delivers less and the rest of us are supposed to pick up the slack. Companies don’t care about adjustments at all. It’s all about profits.

I might sound bitter but it’s because I am 50 and have seen many redundancies.

But a dyslexic person can write emails, with adjustments.

If someone cannot write emails at all then they're probably not suited to a role which requires that.

I was a "study secretary" for a partially sighted student on my social work course. If I hadn't have experienced how hard it is to get accomodations from the same people who were instructing us on the rights of people with disabilities I would never believe that people could be so apathetic towards others. That's not even including the way other students talked about her behind her back.

Also as a teacher, I have only ever met one student for whom extra time was a useful and needed adjustment. And frustratingly she doesn’t have it because her parents don’t believe in learning needs. But I’ve met plenty of students who got it due to generic profiling of their conditions. I was told I was eligible for a free laptop at uni and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why, or how it was supposed to help my cyclical mood disorder, so I didn’t take it, but I had a fair few friends who did take the laptop because it was offered.

It's because the distinction between disability and being non disabled is far less binary than lots of people like to pretend and there are a great many of people that exist in an unacknowledged grey area.

For example, the vast majority of the population will have some specific Neurodivergent traits that are more extreme than people with a diagnosis of a ND condition. This could easily relate to specific workplace activities so you can understand why they feel aggrieved about doing even more than their 'fair' share of this activity because someone has a recognised disability and can legally apply for adjustments. The same goes for physical disabilities. I know someone that has a bad back but isn't registered disabled but they have a colleague that is disabled and therefore completely avoids doing some activities that my friend would also benefit from avoiding too. Instead my friend has to do her own activities and her colleagues.

It boils down to people not believing the reasonable adjustment is reasonable or people not believing that it stems from the disability and isnt just something all people would prefer. There is sometimes a belief it is negatively impact on them, although my view is this is a management issue really. Sometimes people feel all 3 things.

Ive literally never worked with someone who has asked for a reasonable adjustment to my knowledge. They might have had them, but I wasnt aware. Save one teacher who didnt like being looked at, so they taught from the back of the room. It really, really irritated people but their results were good and they were a shortage subject so it was hard to argue it was detrimental.

I think in some cases the hostility comes because a colleague, who has been working at the company for some time, gets a diagnoses as an adult and feels empowered to ask for adjustments. The other people don't see this is as necessary for them to their role because they've been doing their role for years previously (albeit struggling behind the scenes).

The narrative that reasonable adjustments will help people into work/away from benefits is not the reality that lots of people see. They see people who have worked alongside them for years suddenly getting 'preferential' treatment and it irks.