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 suspect management often interpret ‘reasonable’ wrongly. Rather than reasonable in that the proposed adjustments don’t impact other workers or the business as whole, they think ‘reasonable’ means whatever the disadvantaged person needs in order to be able to work. In reality I think the legislation requires all those things to be balanced

so extra breaks but longer hours to compensate is one thing; never having to come into the office so that someone else is asked to come in five days a week when they hadn’t before is another ?

If someone can’t make phone calls why would they apply for and accept a job which involves phone calls?

For me, it's not the principle but the implementation. At one point I worked on my Local Authority's Homeless team. We all had our own caseload but shared certain tasks between us. The general theme was visits in the morning and paperwork in the afternoon unless it was our day to do reception. Reasonable adjustments started by cutting someone's caseload by 50 percent but those cases needed to go somewhere so they were split between the rest of us. Then they couldn't do reception work so came off the rota. Then they couldn't cope with joint meetings (social workers/police etc) so at very short notice we were being drafted into those instead. I personally "love" having to read a case file during the introductions in a room full of professionals who all know the case/family/circumstances. Then because they hadn't been to the meetings, social work or the police might suggest to management that maybe for consistency, the person attending the meeting should take the case and yay... more work.

Ideally, they would have hired more staff as we were already pushing it to fill the gap but they didn't so we all suffered (all paid the same as we were all full time and at the top of our band). At one stage I had 65 homeless people, most of whom had multiple professionals involved and quite frankly needed more time than I had to give. I hated it, felt I wasn't doing my job properly and it made me ill. I managed to keep going until maternity leave but it took it's toll.

I must admit this resonated

but don't have a diagnoses/consider themselves eligible for an adjustment.

I technically probably am eligible. I have multiple mental health diagnoses and some very unhealthy coping mechanisms but my preferred method is to aim for perfection in every way until I snap rather than ask for help.

Every time there is an adjustment (especially often the more unpopular tasks) due to autism/ADHD/stress/the like at my job it means that other employees have to work harder.

I have a colleague who says that "yes, she can do the tasks but why should she when she can avoid it?". She is happy with her special needs.

So you can calculate the enthusiasm yourself.

I agree with this.

I have a reasonable adjustment through work that involves me not going into the office as much as other people are required to. Most people would like to have the increased flexibility that I have (I can go in more, but the minimum requirement for 3 days a week has been reduced to 1). If it’s fine for me without my work or my colleagues being affected, why not for other people in a similar role to me (which is entirely internal, not client facing, with no one in my team based in the same office as me, so me wfh literally makes no difference to anyone)? But they all have to go in 3 times as much.

You wanted honest responses, I hope this is balanced.

Anything to do with people has good, average and poor, it is usually a spectrum rather than clear distinctions. To explain you get good, average and poor managers. You also get good, average and poor employees. How many times do you get employees complaining a colleague gets away doing less, that poor performers are not dealt with etc.? People are actually unique individuals there is no such thing as “normal” it’s actually average in that most people fall in the rough centre of the spectrum.

People with disabilities are the same, some never use their disability as an excuse no matter how much they struggle. At the other end some do use their disability to do the minimum possible. That is no worse than people without a disability as some also do the minimum possible.

Organisations, Senior Managers, managers, and colleagues all struggle with reasonable adjustments, particularly when they can’t “see” or “comprehend” the disability. The same applies to flexible working which can be a reasonable adjustment or can be a right to request; many don’t realise the two are different. There isn’t a blanket set of RA for ADHD, Autism etc. as people don’t necessarily face the same barriers etc.

One side effect of many disabilities is reduced capacity where part time hours would enable people to work the hours they can without exhausting them for anything else e.g. being able to cook a healthy meal when they get home. Masking takes a huge amount of effort that many don’t understand and why many people can’t work full time for 40 years.

We need a huge shift in law, societal and organisational practice to start from a position of what people can do rather than what they can’t do. What tools can then assist people to do their best. Education is key to achieving this but it needs input from quieter voices and not just those who shout the loudest voices.

Most RA cost nothing or pennies it’s creativity that is lacking, it is understanding people don’t fit in a box.

Having said this from the other perspective, businesses have to deliver and achieve and this can require certain minimum requirements. Understanding your employers requirements and working collaboratively and creatively to agree RA achieves the best outcome for both parties.

As a parent of an ND child who is fully aware that he is going to have to make decisions on work based, in part, on what he can and can't do, I am, obviously, very sympathetic to the challenge.

But I agree with others - part of the problem is that reasonable adjustments that negatively impact other team members is not a good option. I listened to an interesting podcast about a year ago or so with an HR person talking to someone about people with hearing disabilities and how a lot of the adjustments for employees with hearing disabilities can be helpful for other staff members too, especially those who might not fully realies they have a hearing problem or have certain forms of ND. The point being that adjustments can and should be made in a way that benefits everyone.

I also think that no matter how much you want to do a certain job, if you don't have the basic ability to do it, then perhaps you have to look at something else. I would have loved to be a doctor but quite frankly, I'm not that good at biology an science so it wasn't an option for me. If you ahte talking on the phone, you can't go work in a call centre.

DS is starting to think about careers. He already knows he has no interest in any job that involves being in an office all day because that will be difficult for him. He is good with people and he's good in a crisis, and he knows that lots of movement and exercise is important for him. He's looking at jobs like physiotherapist, police officer (or, longer term, private detective), sports science, sports coaching etc.

The problem is that neurodiversity is very frequently not visible or observable. And when it is observed, the symptoms often line up exactly with the behaviours you would show if you were lazy, disruptive and selfish.

And of course it can be misdiagnosed, or overdiagnosed. As we have seen it’s more likely you have a diagnosis if you’ve gone to a fee-paying school. Is that better care, or playing the system? Either way that doesn’t feel like a level playing field to me.

It is hard to know what is reasonable. Everyone has problems, but not all these problems are awarded adjustments. Maybe it’s excruciatingly painful periods, or chronic migraine, or simply being very tall so it’s highly uncomfortable/painful sitting at a regular desk in an exam hall.

Basically, I need the capacity to work from home when practical ie when kids are off. Otherwise, I am stuck in a building that gives me flashbacks of total meltdowns/shutdowns due to complete overwhelm and lack of care from SLT. Getting more and more fizzed up by the total hubbub of my colleagues. Distracting them with my hubbub!! Getting FUCK ALL done. My work must be done somehow. So I spend all my free home-time doing it, worrying about it, crying about it, getting angry about it, procrastinating about it, and ultimately, doing it 🥳
It is FUCKNG exhausting and killing me. I am going to push for anything I think they can reasonably give me to mitigate this.
Very aware my official diagnosis will be years coming, but apparently, once I am triaged, they’ll give me a letter for my employer, with suggestions of how to best support me.
I am not putting work on anyone else. I do it. I just need a way to do it and survive too.
My boss very sensibly allowed me to work from home this week. I had so much to do and I have actually been incredibly productive. Because I was given the appropriate environment to do it. Otherwise, I would have had to take AL, as desperate not to be there, but to still have to do the work, and then have less AL for the summer when I need as much time away as I can possibly get.

Yes, typing this I’m very aware you’ll be thinking, why the fuck does she stay?
TBC…

Because it puts a burden on the other workers usually

I wonder that every day. I love my job. My learners are thriving. I need just a little reasonable adjustment to survive.

But if I have grammarly to help me write, how does that burden others? Lots of adjustments don't burden others.

because you can physically pick up that phone and speak...

A dyslexic colleague can still write emails as they would have programs on their computers to help them, they may be slower at it and allowing the extra time to complete the same work would be a reasonable adjustment.

Completely dipping out of certain jobs, while your colleagues then have to take on extra work is what breeds the resentment. Its unreasonable to expect others to pick up what you cant/are unable or unwilling to do.

Where do you see this backlash? Is it at work? I am ND and haven’t experienced this.

I am wondering if it’s something that is on social media? Aside from MN I dont do SM so I’m happily avoiding this negativity possibly ?

Oh, and another aspect is that we should be doing more to help people with disabilities - physical or ND - so that they can cope.

I have a minor physical disability. I grew up in another country and I was lucky enough to be able to access brilliant medical care, consistently, over my lifetime. My parents were able to pay for (or use medical insurance) physiotherapy in multiple formats as well as support/information that they used to then adapt what activities I did and how. they had the knowledge to know that I needed certain exercise and activities and the resources to make it happen. As a result, while I was born with quite low movement on one side of my body, as an adult, you'd not even notice outside of very specific scenarios.

I am a member of a charity that supports people with the same disability as I have in this country. sadly, the NHS does not have the resources to offer children born with this anywhere NEAR the support I got as a child. There is also a lack of understanding of what informal things can be done, or ,when it is understood, there's a lack of resources to make it happen - not everyone can afford years of dance, swimming and piano lessons, all things that my parents signed me up for, with a very specific reason, for many years.

I keep seeing children born like me who by the time they are teenagers, have significantly less movement than I do. And need more help longer term

I also see teenagers who seem to be doing well but because they are in the system, like someone pointed out upthread - are accesing free computers etc that really, they don't need.

As with everything, I think if we had better support in place up front, longer term impacts would be a lot less severe.

The interesting thing about this thread is that OP's original post implied that people's resentment towards the adjustments was due to some kind of ignorance, jealousy or dislike of the disabled person. Absolutely nobody has suggested these motivations at all. Instead all resistance to reasonable adjustments seems to be around the fact that the adjustments aren't fairly, sensibly or equally distributed and this has an adverse and unacceptable impact on the wider workforce.

And I don't think I've ever seen anyone complain about an adjustment that doesn't burden othrs. Most of the time, people dont' even realise they exist. And that's great. Or they're implemented in ways that make sense - I have a client who cannot attend meetings without a full agenda. But actually, it's now become a standard way to operate for the entire team and benefits everyone, and no one knows it was because of her ADHD.

how does me having extra time in professional exams affect others? yet people who know about it complain i am cheating?

Because they think you're getting something they're not

There's an interesting question here about the interplay between different adjustments.

What if the autistic person who can't speak on the phone needs to deal with the dyslexic person who can't deal with email? Presumably, one of them is going to have to bend, which one? Or we conclude they can't work together and someone else in the office has to take over this part of their workload.

I think an adjustment has to be something that allows you to do the job. The whole job. If there are parts of the job that you can’t do that’s not an adjustment. Like if part of the job is answering phones and you say you can’t. Then you are not suitable for that job. An adjustment would be scripts to use for phone calls, extra training, maybe special headphones to make the calls.

when someone can’t do part of the job others have to do it and that’s what causes resentment.

I work with someone who is not disabled they are just pretty useless. It’s well known that they are useless. So they get an easy time and all the difficult tasks are given to the most capable people. Which makes it unfair as their workload is so much lighter.

She is getting something they're not (extra time). That's a fact.

It's the question of whether that's reasonable or not that causes the disquiet.

i don't think it's always ableism. It could be unconcious ableism but i think it is all about perception.

For sure people asking for accommodations and reasonable adjustments don't want their medical or mental health history spread all over the workplace. But if you see one person getting more breaks, or not having to do certain of the tasks that then get spread around other people who may not want to do them, of course it looks unfair to them.

pp mentioned only working 4 days a week and demanding (and getting) the middle day off, but was pretty dismissive about their employer's problem getting someone to cover that day. Who wants to work Wednesdays only?

So a little more openness may lead to a little more understanding?

Because most people would like extra time in exams.

Because not all jobs have every requirement specifically outlined?

Because the job has changed since they started?

Because - and I have had this happen to me - they said in the interview that they couldn’t answer phone calls so call centre work wouldn’t be suitable and HR alllocafed them to the call centre rather than back office admin (recruitment was for both, same grade / pay. Still don’t know why they thought that was sensible)