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 clearly not literally applying those stats to myself. It's clearly illustrative, used to demostrate that ADHD has real consequences.

Or the inability of the employer to afford additional staff and keep the company in business, and make enough profit to pay taxes on it which pay other people's benefits.

In which case, the business is not a viable one. It's not the responsibility of either employee to work themselves into ill health in order to keep someone else's business afloat.

That's a stupidly simplistic way of looking at it.

Sums up everything that poster has posted, really.

No, that only works with binary groups where you can definitively or at least reasonably state that someone is in or out of the group and it also depends on whether the topic or issue discussed only impacts that group.

For example, if I wanted to discuss the health challenges associated with old age then we could set an arbitrary threshold of say 70. Would someone who is 69 have no right to input into the conversation? Say we started to discuss things like declining mobility as a trait of being old, would a younger person with reduced mobility really not understand at all the challenges faced by the old? The world is rarely black and white. Especially when it comes to NT/ND

No, it's the responsibility of the employer to take steps to remove an employee who isn't capable of doing the job.

If the business would go bust otherwise, the choices are that nobody has a job or the put-upon overworks.

Businesses aren't charities. Society as currently organised needs them to make profits to pay taxes.

I actually think it means the adjustment wasnt reasonable which is a poror management issue to me. They shoukd have managed the request better.

it is tricky to be definitive because decision in court would be on a case by case basis, but if the costs is too high, its intolerable on others peoples workoads or its impractical to implement it can be grounds to say no.

If the adjustment is so significant you need to employ an extra person and you cant do this, I think it could be refused. Some element might be ok or a compromise solution, but the adjustment aa stands doesnt appear ok.

Er, you wrote "Without accommodations and medication, my ADHD, statistically speaking, will shorten my life expectancy by decades, double (or more) my risk of drug addiction, and double my risk of unemployment. I'd prefer the sexual harassment, thanks!" Sounds like you're applying those stats to yourself!

As that poster, at my workplace, I can confidently say that no one would give a rats arse if you did A then B or A and B concurrently unless there was regulatory/reporting/oversight reason A has to be done and signed off before B starts or there are colleagues whose work depends on A so overall, it's more effective that A is done first so the follow on work can happen.

Outside those scenarios, it would be totally fine for you to do your job however works for you because we don't police minutae, we care about outcomes. We'd not even consider it a RA because there'd be no suggestion it wasn't ok for you (or anyone else including an NT person) to be the owner of how you carry out your work in the first place.

You think you know my workplace better than I do but you really don't, you are just projecting.

So race is a clear cut group, then?

No, of course it isn't. That's my point. The world isn't binary.

So when you talk about POC and discrimination, normally people assume that the term 'POC' relates to anyone that doesn't present as white. In reality lots of us will have DNA related from non-white races but are unlikely to be discriminated against for this because we present as white.

Does that mean though that someone that looks white must be white and therefore is totally irrelevant to discussions relating to POC? Of course not. When we talk about diseases and medical conditions that impact those of different races then what race you appear to be won't make a jot of difference and it's all about your genetic makeup.

Also lumping together all races into an umbrella term of POC isn't helpful in lots of contexts where there are specific issues that relate to specific races. Statistics get muddied and specific, minority struggles can be lost in the mass that is POC.

It's about applying common sense and appreciating the nuance in life. It's about understanding that whilst it may be useful to discuss POC, the elderly or people with a ND diagnosis as a class at times, it is important to appreciate that the classifications often aren't binary, completely different struggles can be experienced by people within the same classifications and specific struggles can be experienced by a wide range of people that sit outside a specific group but share traits. This is especially true of ND where it's been proven that most of us have ND traits. If you are an Autistic person that is sensitive to noise then you likely have more in common with someone supposedly NT with misophonia in some respects than another person with Autism that can tolerate noise easily.

How is "a company that cannot manage their staff and budget well enough to make a profit is not a viable business" stupidly simplistic?

And that's my point. POC are not a homogenous group, but many POC have experiences in common and may encounter some common or shared issues.

The same goes for ND people.

I can tell you have never run a business. There is a small factor called productivity that makes a huge difference to profitability. Normally if you have an unproductive member of staff then you can performance manage them out of the business. Often margins are tight and there simply isn't enough profit in some businesses to absorb unproductive staff. A large percentage of our businesses operate like this and make very small profits. They are ultimately the work horse if our economy though and keep people employed and maintain GDP.

Businesses are increasingly having to carry relatively unproductive staff that require expensive adjustments and have a legal right to request them. If you dismiss the staff then you will be accused of discrimination, so it is very difficult indeed to performance manage them. If you're operating in a global, competitive market then this can ultimately increase costs that you then need to pass on to the consumer. Suddenly you are uncompetitive and will go out of business. It's really not that hard to understand. This is why RAs must be focussed on being actually reasonable b

Yes but the difference is that it would be fleetingly unlikely for someone who passes as white to experience racism.

It would however be very common for someone who is NT to struggle with a ND traits at work.

Nuance is important as is the reality of the classifications we are talking about. Being ND is not comparable to being a POC. It really isn't.

Yes, good point. I admit I was reading fast on my phone and missed "the whole extra staff member" part.

I don't mean to imply that companies should employ two people to do one person's job.

Lots of reasons. One being that people would be out of jobs! Just think it through for more than 2 seconds.

And around we go again.

What?

Sorry what's confusing you?

I've got enough business experience, thank you.

I never said that RAs should not be reasonable.

On the flip side, if you can't make your business competitive without breaking labour laws, it's not a good business.

Performance management is very hard, but it's a core part of running a business.

Try being white and going deep into Welsh speaking Wales or "I support any team that isn't English" Scotland.

Racism is not the preserve of black people.

To go back to the original point: an NT person occasionally forgetting things is not the same as ADHD.

Why are you so determined to prove that the whole neurodiversity movement doesn't exist?

Do you think is impossible for the labour laws to be wrong?

There are many businesses in the leisure sector closing at the moment because they employed so many young staff and last years budget put the costs of employing them up by 20% or thereabouts.

Is it better that there should be no job at all for those young people or that their minimum wage should not have been increased so much?

If it costs so much to provide reasonable adjustments that people will not pay what it now costs to provide a service, how is that helping the people who now have no job at all or the customers who now can't buy the product or service?

The only way your statement could possibly be correct is of people were prepared to pay whatever it cost to provide the product or service that any business delivers.

Apologies for all the typos! Edited now.