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

Her work is safe. It just aggregates her back. My friend definitely wouldn't be defined as disabled.

I always find it an interesting fact that over half the population have a chronic long term health condition. This means loads of people are working with sub optimal health. We can't all be shielded from tasks and responsibilities as there would be hardly anyone left to do anything.

but if those adjustments dont exist, those disabled people wont be able to find jobs. would you rather they die of hunger? or sit at home and claim benefits?

I’m all for supporting people to work but when it’s done badly then it overloads others and is no longer reasonable. I’ve had experience of picking up additional tasks from someone as a reasonable adjustment as their manager. I basically did 1.5 roles. I argued this was not reasonable for me or the rest of the team and was advised to seek a stress assessment myself. Then I guess my manager would have been told to pick up some of my work and so it goes in.
when it really is reasonable and takes account of others in the team so no one is disadvantaged I fully support it .

Okay, so would you get extra time at work to do the same work that someone else is doing, because you have slower processing?

No, because my work doesn’t generally require me to do the tasks that I’m slower at. Or if it does, I can make up the time because I’m faster at other tasks. Like most people, really.

Exams are a specific way of assessing knowledge. They generally bear no resemblance to how you work in the real world. At least in my line of work - others may vary.

I explained earlier how peer ranking and relative scoring can mean that someone gaining extra time in an exam can directly reduce another person's score and potentially life prospects.

Not looking to fight — just trying to understand where this reaction comes from

Having said this in your opening post, do you feel you’re taking on board the responses you’re getting where people explain where the reaction comes from? Or just telling them they’re wrong, you’re right, your colleagues are mean and everyone’s out to get you?

You’ve got what you want, you can’t force other people to be happy about it. They’re not from what you say and you’re not listening to posters on here who are giving you possible reasons why that is.

you seem quite confrontational? is that why you feel the resentment around you?

Dozens of posters have explained why things are perceived as extra beneficial for x person that everyone else might like to have too.

Does everyone who moans about your extra time in exams know why you have it? do you want them to know? if not, then you need to develop a thicker skin possibly?

What about people with a stammer? They have to answer the phone, deal with queries along with everyone else. Answering the phone is an interruption of work. They would feel resentful of people with perfect speech getting out of it.

Since I sm in my 50s, I get tired easily and a part time job with a quiet office would be welcome. I am extremely introverted and a noisy office exhausts me. We all could do with adjustments.

Op do you want a discussion about this or just to offload because you’re feeling frustrated?

I ask because you posed the first post as a question but actually are coming across as a bit defensive in your later posts when people try to explain why.

a large part of my job involves persuading people to make reasonable adjustments so that more neurodivergent people can be fully included, so I’m certainly not anti but I can still see how some adjustments requested are not actually “reasonable” without other people having to work harder or the work that needs to be done suffering.

EG requesting longer breaks, later starts or earlier finishes may well be very helpful for a neurodivergent individual but could be incredibly difficult to manage without a colleague picking up the extra work at certain points in the day.

I do agree that this is for management to sort out but realistically if there isn’t money available to hire somebody extra to support then what are management going to do?

Usually it’s not too big of a challenge with one person requesting these type of adjustments but if a workplace has several people (and some do now) all requesting extra breaks or earlier starts for example then this puts a lot of strain in the system.

So, perhaps what you are perceiving as animosity is, a lot of the time simply people responding to the strain of work pressures.

I 💯 agree with supporting people with reasonable adjustments but actually in order to get these in place more readily we do need to accept that it’s a tricky issue and look for solutions together.

Some of these replies are really sad. I worked in a call centre, shift work, on the phones all day. I would arrive home, eat a ready meal, dump the packaging in the bin and go to bed. I wasn't fit for anything else-the commute, being around others all day, constant noise, interruptions, the awful lights in the building, the temp suiting the majority of people (fine, but I can't regulate my body temp like most healthy people can) meant I had no outside of work quality of life.

I was hitting my targets, but I wasn't living, I was surviving.

Covid happened and they realised we could work from home so I did, for a year, I started smashing my targets. I started being able to sit on my sofa and watch tv after work. I could put the washing machine on pre work, empty it on my lunch break, so my weekends weren't me doing all the housework and then having a pain flare, because I could space it out during the week.

When my colleagues went back to office, I refused to. In the office you would be told off for talking to the person next to you because there were calls queueing. You'd be told off for too many toilet breaks (the toilet was two floors down) At home I had no one trying to chat to me so I took the next call faster, and my toilet was 15 steps away.

I will never, ever, go back into an office now. Yes, that means I couldn't apply for certain jobs that aren't suitable for working from home. But my job IS. The only difference whatsoever is that customers can't hear call centre background noise on the phone to me. So if I am silent for a few seconds doing something, I just tell them I'm still on the call.

Some people though think I shouldn't be able to work from home. Why?

This is a great point.
When I was doing my A-levels, my close friend was dyslexic and she described what that looked like for her a being literally just struggling with punctuation and spelling. At that time, 'grammar' (so spelling etc) only accounted for a total of 2% of our marks- yet she was given an extra 20 minutes for every hour of exam time. To me that's not leveling the playing field, that's far over and above what would level the playing field.

It meant for a 3 hour exam, where they told us that gives you JUST enough time to cover the level of detail needed- she got 4 hours. A whole extra hour to peruse over punctuation that was only ever going to impact marks by 2%. Unsurprisingly, she was one of the only ones in the room asking for extra paper.

Now I work in HR, and I don't think most people are bitter or selfish when they feel put out by others' reasonable adjustments. Often these affect the balance of their own work, or they understandably feel like their own difficulties, like balancing childcare for example, are completely overlooked and they're left to struggle because their barriers don't fall under neurodiversity/ disability. I can see both sides and where working people are under so much pressure, I understand where some of this comes from.

Reasonable adjustments are fine.

However, when those adjustments have a negative impact on other members of staff then it simply isn't fair.

Yes they might be necessary. Yes it's better for people to be in work than claiming benefits.

None of that changes the fact that if you're being made to do more work (without extra pay) as a direct result of someone else not being able to fully perform their role, you are going to feel resentment.

I'm AuDHD and a senior manager. I feel like I see both sides of this, having asked for adjustments myself and had varying responses to it, and dealing with requests from ND staff that I get brought to me from the managers I look after.

Sometimes I really have to persuade struggling late diagnosed ND staff that adjustments are needed and really are okay to use.

On the other side, some of the things our younger staff in particular think are reasonable adjustments just aren't reasonable.

Im dyslexic and I managed to qualify as a solicitor. Speech recognition tools exist. MS Teams meetings can be transcribed. I have been dictating letters to my secretary to be typed since early in my career.

It's ignorant of you to assume dyslexic people cant read at all. There are varying degrees of severity.

If someone with autism/ adhd cant use a phone there are just some jobs they cannot do. And they need to accept that.

Ive given mentoring to youngsters who want to become lawyers.

I did a careers fair once, and I had a young student telling me that she wanted to be a barrister, but her anxiety and autism meant she could never look anyone in the eye. She finds it too intense. She didn't look me in the eye once.

She was outraged to be told that this might not be the best career choice and that you could not go through tthe profession never looking anyone in the eye, including your client, your instructing solicitor the judge or the person you are cross examining.

I asked if she'd sought help for her anxiety and autism and she expected allowances to be made for her nneeds instead. She was indignant that she could be a great barrister without the ability to look anybody in the eye or at their face because of her social anxiety and neurodiversity.

I came across a 22 year-old trainee last year who couldnt speak on the phone in anyone else's presence and demanded a private room every time he had to speak on the phone, otherwise he would be unable to talk on the phone.

At the suggestion that it wasn't going to work because you can't always guarantee when clients are going to call you. People can call you randomly without an appointment and so can defendant solicitors, etc. You won't always be able to dart to a private room as they won't always be available. He instead began to raise that we weren't supporting his anxiety and neurodiversity and began quoting statutes at us and that we were breaching equality rules relating to his disability. Interestingly enough he kept that quiet on his application for training contract that he would need adjustments.

It was also part of his training that we hear how he is on the phone with clients and d other people, it's part of the assessment. We need to know what he's saying and the advice he's giving.

The reason why there is backlash is some of the adjustments are not reasonable and means that you are excluded from some careers / jobs. Some jobs can't be done without you using the phone and, actually, looking at people that you re talking to in the eye.

This x100

I never told u dyslexic people can't read. I just pointed out some pepole cant write emails cos they might be dyslexic

This is an easy one … because we are living through an ever-deepening mindset of insufficiency, which exacerbates the inherent tribalism of human animals.

so if “they” get anything at all that I don’t get, it must mean I get or have less.

making adjustments for ND people to do a job that a NT person could do with out the adjustment appears to Nt folk to be making it harder for them to have a job.

but everyone in your office could have benefitted from working from home under those circs. But only you were allowed. If i had been in that office i would not have been at all happy about that.

and there are plenty of adhd autistic ppl who cant hold jobs or form relationships outside of family. what is your point?

I think it’s ignorance, many people thinking they know better and that the conditions either don’t exist or have been misdiagnosed, combined with a dismissive attitude that everyone has some of the symptoms and they just get on with life. Basically it’s because they have no idea of what a disability the conditions are and the reality of it all.

I m using speech recognition to type these posts... dyslexia was a very poor example by comparison.

Some adjustments can't be made, such as a prospective solicitor who can't ever be overheard on the phone by anyone as they go mute. It cannot be done and they will come unstuck.

This. I have seen "reasonable adjustment" made which has piled more work, or the more stressful aspects of the work onto other workers and can see why that doesn't go down well.

why don't you complain to management instead of hating that colleague? lots of people might wfh bc of serious illnesses, e.g. autoimmune conditions

how does someone wfh or taking more time to finish exams affect others tho?

PP have covered most of the common reasons. In regards to employment it can be due to poor management/ implementation of the adjustments - e.g. someone needing limited phone/ customer interaction time or more wfh. If managed poorly will impact on other staff. For example with someone who had autism, was able to work, but found a lot of customer interaction very difficult so needed adjustments. They could manage quiet weekdays, non customer facing roles such as stock rotation and filling in the shop or clearing tables in the cafe. The adjustment may be no weekend/ busy time working. Understandably, several staff may be upset as part of adjustments they didn't work weekends- especially if part of the contract was weekend working and everyone wanted weekends off. They could be swapped out of customer facing to back of house shifts during busy times. There were times when customer facing roles are challenging.

One thing that i do think makes people less tolerant as well, is the fact that basic workload is so high, so when someone needs adjustments and it's not managed properly, it can impact workload of others. For example in my old workplace , when I started it was a team of 16 people. 2 years into my job the team was halved to 8 people, we still had the same workload and in some cases more but were expected to manage with 8 of us. Another 2 years later that same team was cut to 4 people with the same level of workload as when the team was 16 people. Any reasonable adjustment in regards to working hours/ not doing certain parts of the role would negatively impact the rest of the team no matter how well managed.