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'm not your employer but I can easily understand them. They're probably thinking, "Why is it my issue that you can't work 4 consecutive days, what am I your mother? Why do I need to bend over backwards and add to my mental load and stress just because I had the misfortune of hiring you?"

And to you this might seem unfair, but it can seem equally unfair to your employer.

This kind of coaching normally comes into play when they are teenagers and at college. Eye contact and conversations.
They may never like doing those things but they can all do it.

I bet none of them are declaring this on their application either.

Would you think the same about someone who requested the same working pattern for childcare? Particularly about the “misfortune of hiring you”? If not, why not?

@Notsolittlebutstillsoyoung
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.

I was at Thorpe Park half a dozen times in the past few weeks. The access queue for Hyperia was easily half an hour wait or longer. Yet not one single person there had a meltdown or displayed any kind of distress. Not one of the seemingly healthy people who 'is unable to queue' appeared to actually struggle with queuing.

So it does actually seem like people are either gaming the system or getting some kind of unfair advantage because of a diagnosis.

I disagree completely. Overall, I think this thread is supportive of adjustments for people with disabilities. What is being debated is how far these should go, and where the line is in respect of those adjustments having a negative knock on effect on everyone else from co-workers to clients.

And if that discussion can't happen and the disabled person's preferred adjustments must just be made, without discussion, every time, then yes, there will be a problem longer term.

Honestly I'd think the same thing. An employer's relationship to their employees is 'you work I pay'. It shouldn't be incumbent on the employer to have to go to unreasonable lengths to accommodate any random stranger's requirements or demands, just because they happened to employ them.

I have ME/CFS. I look like a normal healthy person.

However I am too ill to work. I could stand in a 30 minute queue but I would have to spend the next few days in bed if I did that.

You can't tell by looking at someone how their disability affect them.

Would you prefer to see one of those children/adults have a distressing meltdown when queuing? Would you feel better then about them skipping the bigger line?

Those lines for Hyperia are also for people that have fast pass so they are full of people who have paid the extra to skip the bigger line. They are not full of people who are disabled.

Kids/adults with autism can wait in queues to a degree, just not 2 hours or 60 minutes for a ride kind of queuing, hence why you can see them being ok in a relatively short queue.

No, they don't really really hate it, they really really can't do it

You and I must be reading very different threads.

Or more like it doesnt come naturally to them in the same way it does for NTs

KeenTaupeDog…Absolutely not but they should work within their means and ability to cope and not depend on other workers/ their colleagues to carry them.
Your co workers may have equally stressful external pressures to deal with without being “put upon”
Fairness above all.

Part of the problem is that adjustments are now being asked for to deal with things that can be faked, can be caused by laziness, could maybe be coped with with the right training.

And before you shoot me down, I have a diagnosis of ADHD from an NHS psychiatrist specialising in adult ADHD. I know how exhausting it makes life.

But I've never been late for work or a meeting in my life except for stuff like closed roads and cancelled trains. I've often been early, though, as much as a day early on several occasions! Being early is my way of never being late, and my way of making sure other people don't think that I think my time is more important than theirs.

I'm not saying everyone with ADHD could achieve this, but someone referred above to people with ADHD starving without reasonable adjustments to carry on working. I'm pretty certain that if it was turn up to work on time or be thrown out of a job with no benefits to fall back on, there would be very few people with ADHD starving to death due to not being able to get to work on time.

We forget to eat until we are fainting with hunger, we don't forget to eat until we die.

This inability to clearly identify who is really struggling and can't function with the adjustments is the root of the problem posed by this thread.

This is where it does get annoying, tbf. Who are you to say what 'comes naturally' to a whole swathe of the population? Tonnes of things in my job don't 'come naturally' to me at all, and I have to do them anyway! To evoke the idea of what 'comes naturally' in the context of the endless wheelchair analogies is also somewhat crass.

Because an exam is at its core a test to check how capable you are compared to the standard. If someone isn't capable, be it because they're stupid, lazy or ND, it boils down to not being capable.

Should I be allowed to win races by starting off halfway through because I'm slow and fat?

That simply not true. A lot of NT have their sh*t to deal with

I think the wheelchair analogies are fine, but dn't go far enough. I've never had to work with someone who was in a wheelchair that materially impacted me in any way whatsoever with the possibly teeny tiny issue that sometimes in the lift fewer people could get on because the wheelchair user was in there. ie barely an issue at all.

That's the point.

The sorts of issues people have on this thread is where the adjustment is negatively impacted. if, for example, due to space constraints, it was decided that anyone who did not have a wheelchair would now have to stand at their desk rather than sit.... it would be reasonable for the people who aren't in wheelchairs to be frustrated.

Yep, this is exactly the attitude that evokes the criticism

The fast pass and access are different queues. And no, I wouldn't want to see anyone having a meltdown, I'm just extremely skeptical of the whole 'unable to queue' business.

While I'm sure unablers exist, I'm also pretty sure the vast majority of those in the access queue were able to queue. They just find it easier to only queue for 40 minutes instead of 80.

And if they manage perfectly well when it's a 30-40 minute queue, should there even be an access queue at times when the park isn't that busy and the main queue is only about 45 minutes?

Being slow and fat isn’t a disability.

I can guarantee that I am more competent at my actual job than 90% of the people who didn’t need extra time to pass exams.

I think the key word is reasonable adjustments; extra tech, extra time , adjusted hours there is no issue but at some point it has to be accepted that a job isn’t for a particular person. I have had a couple of requests for reasonable adjustments that have been anything but reasonable and have had to advised that the job isn’t for them including:

Time Blindness, this particular person would only accept the option of turning up to work/ meetings at anytime if they turn up at all.

not speaking directly to customers in a customer facing role, they said they would work in a back office doing admin instead.

Someone who could not speak to men so wanted a guarantee that they would only be asked to help women.

dyslexics cannot read without great difficulty compared to non-NTs.
autistics cannot socialise without great difficulty compared to non-NTs.
etc.
socialising etc. might be hard for everyone, by autistics find it harder

And if they manage perfectly well when it's a 30-40 minute queue, should there even be an access queue at times when the park isn't that busy and the main queue is only about 45 minutes?

Yes, because a lot of people can’t queue for that length of time. The reason that nobody noticed those people in the queue is probably because they took one look at its length and gave up.

(I do agree there is a wider issue about managing access queues)

I'm interested in what you mean by work within their means, isn't that what they are trying to do with reasonable adjustments?
Or do you mean only apply for jobs that meet their needs, because there aren't many of those, and so they would end up still on benefits.