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

either way they will have something that negatively affects them

I was diagnosed by an NHS psychiatrist who specialises in adult ADHD, I think he knows his job.

I work around my "significant impairment" so that it is not a disability.

Difficulty is not the same as disability.

I can only speak for the last paragraph. My job entails both admin and call answering in between. If all the admin was given to one person and calls given to someone else, the person doing all the admin would have a much more enjoyable and less stressful working day than the person left answering calls. I think thats the unfairness people are talking about. I am all for special equipment being provided to make someone's working life more comfortable but in my experience people's RA requests have always been things like can't answer the phones, can't work the late shift, can't work weekends etc.

yes I think you are right. I am retired now but have seen a change in how some possibly neurological behavioural conditions are approached and viewed. Its a long road, I am by no means saying that all is now fine and dandy but there is more of an attitude that if its not a problem for the person and they are not dangerous to society, then change by therapy or medication is not the only option. I think the most obvious one is Tourettes but the other one which springs to mind is "voice hearing" which used to be inextricably linked with poor mental health.

Because we've made all the square holes round.

To be employed these days, it seems you have to work full time, work at a certain pace, in a certain way, be great at job interviews, and have specific people skills.

There seems to be less room for people to do things "their" way.

If all the admin was given to one person and calls given to someone else, the person doing all the admin would have a much more enjoyable and less stressful working day than the person left answering calls

Some people actually prefer answering calls to doing admin, though. So you can’t assume that admin is automatically the “better” job.

@Marshmallow4545 I doubt your assertion that "not everybody is completely NT" is accurate. It is true to say that many or even most people exhibit some of the traits of ND but only a few to a diagnosable level.

It is known though that there are structural, functional and connectivity differences in people with ND. People with ADHD have different brain chemistry.

Implying that everyone is a bit ND is kind of like saying that everyone has a bit of dementia.

It's not an assumption though I am speaking from experience.

Can you please send us a link to the evidence that ND brains are structurally different from NT ones?

Also, if that's the case, why do we muck around with lengthy psychiatric appointments, questionnaires from various etc, if it could be shortcutted by a scan?

That Is likely to be very job-specific then. In many jobs it would be fine to have some people on calls, others doing admin according to preferences and skills.

However, as many employers have noticed, if a job can be WFH it can be WFA... and much cheaper to get someone in India or Philippines to do it.

I would 'agree' ten times if it were possible!

I completely disagree. Most people will exhibit specific Neurodivergent traits in specific areas. Whether they have enough of these traits in specific areas to warrant a diagnosis of a ND condition is another question.

Just looking at Autism alone. According to studies around of quarter people would meet the criteria for BAP (Broader Autism Phenotype). They would in a binary world still be considered NT but they may well experience a particular trait more strongly than someone with an Autism diagnosis.

This is true for all ND conditions. There of course will always be people that just miss the threshold for diagnosis and those that just meet it. The people either side of the threshold will potentially have far more in common with each other than their counterparts that sit on the extremes of the NT/ND spectrum.

Also observable brain differences are not sufficiently understood to even begin to start to diagnose people based on brain scans. It is absolutely not comparable to dementia which is often caused by disease rather than natural differences in the brain.

but the NT people who have similar problems to ND people can still get diagnosed with other disorders... maybe not autism but other stuff like ocd, a personality disorder etc., anxiety and depression that they can get workplace adjustments for

Speaking as one of those NT people, even though I could ask and probably get (diagnoses of ptsd and gad amongst other things) I never would because it's tantamount to admitting I'm worth less (or at least that's how I perceive it). I wonder if how we see the world and our place in it plays a part when it comes to reasonable adjustments, both in embracing or dismissing them. I see my diagnoses as something rotten, shameful, to be hidden and suppressed in public. The people I know who have asked for rational adjustments see theirs very differently.

My mental ill health manifests as perfectionism. My work pattern is one of blazing ridiculously bright, extra hours, extra training, excelling in all areas until I break and then a period of recovery, enforced therapy, voluntary work/study and repeat. I had to cancel two appointments today because I was coughing so hard I was vomiting this morning. I'm now in bed beating myself up for doing so even though logically I know no one wants to be either coughed on or vomited on.

Some studies suggest there are some differences at a population level but there are studies that suggest that kind or intelligent people also have different brains. There is even studies that suggest that your socio economic status as a child will lead to your brain developing differently. All of these things can be advantageous or disadvantageous, especially at the extremes and yet we don't call any of this ND.

This is why I refuse to buy into the ND/NT binary concept. The science simply doesn't support it.

I don't know what type of jobs can be separated into A takes all the calls and B handles all the emails.

Every job i've ever had needs a combination of communication channels, and the service user or customer must be free to use any and all of them. So if A is taking all the calls there is an almost inevitable addition of burden because they will be talking to B's users/customers. And either A then has to make a full report so that B can do the work, or A has to take over. And what if the customer wants a call back? A briefs B, B does some work, B briefs A and A calls the customer?

So that would be a hugely unreasonable adjustment. Most workplaces would point that out carefully and tactfully and leave B (or A whichever asked for that adjustment) to decide if this is the job for them. Or B (or A) simply cannot do that job and has to be let go. But some workplaces get in an absolute panic that the employee will take them to ET with all the costs and related reputational damage. So they say "sure, A - here's a whole bunch of extra work. No there is no extra support for you, suck it up"

Better working practices, that help everyone (or most people) is the way forward, as in the uni mentioned above that now records all lectures. Everyone wins there.

we seem to be forgetting 2 things with comments like this. 1 is that the employer is fully entitled to want a full time worker who does x, y and z and is therefore paid for that. the second is that it is most definitely an employers market.

Go in with an attitude of "but it's the lawwwwww" - assuming you have detailed your limitations at interview - if the company cannot accommodate that, you have to go. They do not have to rearrange a perfectly well functioning company to accommodate an individual or two. The net result of the "buuuutttt i have the riiigghhhhhttt" is that the employer digs in, and does not (carefully to avoid discrimination lawyers breathing down their necks) employ anyone who is not prepared to do what the company wants.

As i said: all companies should always look at requests for reasonable accommodations - for everyone, but particularly disabled people - and not just dismiss everything out of hand. The ones that do rate highly on things like Glass Door and have very low staff turnover.

I don't know what type of jobs can be separated into A takes all the calls and B handles all the emails.

I don’t know whether this still happens, but a lot of customer contact centres used to have front office and back office roles, which effectively split into front office = calls and back office = admin. So in that kind of setup it would be fairly easy.

i have worked in back office and office management and i have had to do everything from taking/making calls to f2f meetings with suppliers etc etc.

I'm sure there are jobs that can be separated, and i would hope that people who have limitations apply for them.

What happens if you dont work around it?

The disability bit of the act is actually based on 'without mitigating measures"

Being able to work around something doesn’t mean it’s no longer a disability 🫣

Here you go:

https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/brain-structure-changes-in-autism-explained/

This one is about autism. It explains why you can’t diagnose it with a scan.

I don’t see how this could be a matter of opinion to be honest.

BAP is a cognitive or personality style. Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition.

So both have some of the same traits but one is personality and the other is due to differences in the brain.

So for example both might like routine. A BAP person might feel somewhat annoyed if their routine is disrupted whereas an autistic person might become highly anxious or unable to function.

The ‘symptoms’ of BAP are mild.

Science is evolving and a lot of the difficulties with imaging take time to overcome.

A study in Japan has been trying to iron out the subtle differences in MRI scanning machines so that more accurate and comparable results can be yielded. They found that people with ADHD have smaller volumes of key areas of the brain.

www.nature.com/articles/s41380-025-03142-6

https://www.psypost.org/altered-brain-activity-patterns-affect-adhd-risk-not-vice-versa/

https://www.psypost.org/scientists-use-ai-to-detect-adhd-through-unique-visual-rhythms-in-groundbreaking-study/

https://www.sciencealert.com/abnormal-patterns-in-brain-waves-may-indicate-adhd-expert-says

There a lot more these are just what I've bookmarked recently. We are different. We are better at some things, like pattern spotting in confused data, than NT people. We find some things (sitting still, admin are issues for me) more difficult.

Difficult and disabling are not synonyms.