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

You are only presuming 'NDs find it harder'... You dont actually know that.

Not really an answer to the question but it seems to me people are focused more these days on what they can't do rather than what they can do. It is quite a negative outlook.

so in your opinion, what makes adhd and autism a disorder if they find socialising etc. as hard as an NT?
do you not think those things are valid disorders?
autistic people do not innately make eye contact and need to be coached well in their adolescence, but NTs can as children?

If she did mask her whole life and suck it up, then she could do that.

This takes away from genuine cases where they are unable to mask.

the majority of NDers are unemployed...
it turns out we can't do most jobs

I often wonder the same thing. My son has adhd and I suspect he inherited from me and I just want the world to be kind to him.

without wishing to derail the thread, we were recruiting at work last year and a person with ADHD who applied requested to be provided with the interview questions ahead of the interview as a reasonable adjustment. I’m in two minds whether that was a reasonable request or not - it was felt that it ‘more’ than levelled the playing field by the people on the panel.

I'm sure this isn't true. I am married to someone ASD, I'm ADHD and I have seen fairly obviously, or openly declared, ND people at work all my working life. ADHD people often make great sales people, for example, and ASD people often make great Finance or Strategy Directors, for examples.

Pretty sure we have had several ND people in my office, in fact within my team, so I am not so sure about that.

piffle
Masking, as we know if we pay attention is exhausting. Why should some people be expected to "manage" while others get help? We should all be getting help and support.

ND issues run in our family and looking at wider family members it is clear where the strain runs.

You are saying that women who are now middle aged and have probably had massive fights and issues all their working lives anyway, should continue to suck it up even while other people should be getting adjustments - that may well impact on some of these women.

Got it. You are more about creating an "us and them" than finding ways to improve working lives for everyone. To be clear because there are a lot of pp here who apparently aren't reading and inwardly digesting all the posts here:

Reasonal adjustments are vital for many people and they should be applied wherever they are reasonably able to be implemented. Additionally if adjustments can be made in workplaces to improve people's working environment without impacting productivity (and we know that some adjustments lead to increased productivity) they should be applied too.

And it is human nature that they are going to have some resentment - although they should not show it, they are only human - towards the person who is percieved as getting an "easy ride" at their expense. We know that management can be cowardly in many ways.

@Imdunfer @WimbyAce - the stats would disagree with you.

"2 - Despite their wish to work, the latest official statistics show that only around 3 in 10 working age autistic disabled people are in employment, compared with around 5 in 10 for all disabled people and 8 in 10 for non-disabled people. "

www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-buckland-review-of-autism-employment-report-and-recommendations/the-buckland-review-of-autism-employment-report-and-recommendations

Just as we cannot expect an autistic person to put on their big girl pants and get on with it, I do get frustrated with the flip side as not all NT people are the same, and shouldn’t be expected to be perfect at organisation. Maybe that’s why some of the NT people are getting so angry about it I don’t know.

I am NT I think, but I know that I need to build in down time. I think just about everyone has personal foibles that need to be worked around, it’s just that an autistic person’s may be more pronounced and if they aren’t accommodated the impact is more severe.

I have probably managed to insult everyone here.

it’s not true that autistic people have no agency or capacity to learn skills to manage their working lives. It does require insight and sometimes, yes, accepting that their behaviour can have negative consequences.

But there’s becoming a narrative that autistic people are never able to be accountable for their behaviour or make any sort of change. There is a difference between those autistic people who have the level of disability that means they struggle with every aspect of life and those autistic people who still are able to go on to have families, jobs and need support as to how they live the best they can despite their diagnosis.

I'm part of that demographic. Had a late diagnosis of ADHD and 'tism after both DC had theirs (1 Autism, 1 AuDHD). A lot of people in a work context would never know, unless they know me well, because I still put a huge amount of effort into masking, some of which probably isn't necessary, and some that feels like it is, especially in a senior management role. In all honesty, both I and some of my ND colleagues have openly said that we mask harder because of the risk of being associated with a certain element of the late diagnosed, middle aged, middle class white female crew at work. This small but vocal group of utter clowns have made it so much harder for the rest of us who just want to get on with doing our jobs while ND in peace.

This particular group of women are avid followers of all the neuro-influencers, and have bought into the idea that it is somehow desirable to need to be completely infantilised at work, have people walk on eggshells around you for fear of "triggering your PDA", that you can't possibly be expected as a healthcare professional to keep to an appointment schedule and that this and other very basic expectations of the job like doing your appointment notes in rhe required format are "oppressive and neuro-ableist".

I would be ashamed to behave in this childish, self involved, entitled manner in a workplace, especially in healthcare, where we are supposed to put patients first. Perhaps I do have some internalised ableism, I'm willing to admit that. I'm totally in favour of neuroinclusive workplaces. But surely, "neuroimclusivity" can't mean that a group of formerly professional, capable women get to morph into stroppy, entitled, navel gazing teenagers at work almost overnight because they've had a diagnosis of ADHD and/or autism?

I don't think so. I think that report is talking about 1 in 3 registered disabled autistic people.

Most autistic people are not registered disabled and are in work.

Go to any research or scientific company. You'll find the workforce stuffed full of people with autism, the analyticsal careers suit them and attract them.

So why not give the questions to everyone you were interviewing?

and that is not anything i have ever said. You have been particularly hostile to the idea that women finally realising they should be allowed some adjustments to their load are a bunch of fakers.

Not very empathetic or inclusive, eh?

All autistic people are disabled - that's the very definition of it.

also we are talking a lot about ND people but there are people with physical disablities (hope that's not an insulting term?) who also need and deserve reasonable adjustments. And they absolutely should get them.

What do you mean by “registered disabled”. Other than for a couple of very specific things (which are not autism), there is no disability register.

And an autism diagnosis IS a disability - whether the individual chooses to identify that way or not. I have autism and I am disabled.

It's protected under the equalities act as a disability and has been for some time now.

And a lot of them are invisible. Most have no ascess to adjustments in work life.

Maybe the conversation needs to widen to include compensation to NT people who end up with more work as a result of RA to others? For example, in my previous job I had a ND colleague who refused to work on site, even though the role was hybrid. The exec team had decided that a person at my level should be in daily, but as there were only 2 of us, I ended up bring the only person to cover the whole week. Not guilt tripping them, but for 2 years I paid £10 a day travel to get in/out of work whereas they didn't. But over 2 years they ended up being about 4k better off than me.

yes but they should feel able, made to feel able, to request them.

Which is one reason that adjustments that would help many people are generally a good idea without outing or othering anyone

But this just isn’t true at all. There’s that saying isn’t there that when you have something super complicated to do you need to find the most autistic person you know to help.

the problem comes when people don’t play to their strengths and go in instead to any job and demand accommodations. But accommodations will often come at a cost to an employer and at some point, especially small businesses, they’re just going to say no and choose someone else. Be careful what you wish for.

if I had an accountancy firm, I’d probably be actively looking for autism in the interview, a swimmer with adhd but swimming is their hyper focus, but a customer facing role I’d choose someone who could look me in the eye and speak.

it’s well known that many of the super high up super focused CEOs have adhd, and many athletes.

on the exam point - maybe if it’s just supposed to be a test of knowledge, then do away completely with a time limit? Everyone take whatever time they need. How would those who get extra time currently feel about that?

as for exams: i have long thought that there are so many professions/jobs/roles where you don't need to keep great chunks of knowledge in your head that exams where you regurgitate facts etc are useless.

Open book exams would be far more useful: you need a certain amount of knowledge in your head, but far more important and useful is knowing where to find the information you need above those basics, and how to apply that knowledge once you have located it. For everyone

It absolutely is true. About 70% of people with autism are unemployed - see below:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-buckland-review-of-autism-employment-report-and-recommendations/the-buckland-review-of-autism-employment-report-and-recommendations