The Accommodation Problem

The voices of disabled folks have been stifled for a very long time.

Disabled people can live beautiful, fulfilling lives. Disabled people can be smart and funny. Disabled people have friends, and moms, and pets…

Disabled people have also been historically pushed out of public life, shut into their homes, under-supported, underpaid, and expected to survive on far less than what is needed to live with dignity.

And still, disabled communities have continued to advocate, organize, and push for access in a world that has made that access unnecessarily hard. Thanks to the trails blazed by many who have come before us, and to many others who are still alive and continuing to advocate, accommodations for those with disabilities have continued to become more and more normalized. Heck – there are whole jobs made to support DEI these days (insert joke about DEI cuts in Ontario? Maybe not… too soon.)

Some accommodations that have been normalized (non-exhaustive list):

• wheelchair ramps

• Elevators

• Handrails

• Airplane boarding priority

• Tech advancements (ereaders, voice-overs, captioning, etc.)

• School accommodations (assignment extensions, note takers, class recordings, etc.)

• Widely available interpreters

• Broader general expectations from government programs to assist disabled folks vocationally, financially or medically

I know myself, and plenty of other Canadians are grateful for these services. That being said… There is a long way to go before these systems and services become consistently helpful in the ways disabled people need them to be.

In my practice (where I work largely with adults navigating Autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergent conditions), I see my clients do so much for themselves.

First, they have made it to therapy!

This alone requires self-awareness, the ability to identify that something is not working, the willingness to seek support, and the executive functioning to research therapists, book appointments, remember appointments, attend those appointments regularly, and then engage in the work (which can be taxing in all kinds of ways) once they get there.

My neurodivergent clients work so hard inside and outside of therapy, unlearning their internalized ableism, navigating external barriers and sources of ableism, and trying to build up lives that fit who they are within a world that punishes difference.

Advocacy: The Labour of Asking, Inventing, and Explaining

There’s a point at which someone is already putting in maximum effort to advocate for their needs, just to be met with systems that work against them and continuously make things harder than they need to be.

This can look like trying to make a medical appointment through a broken portal, or being met with a constantly busy phone line, limited office hours, or long wait times. It can look like asking for help and being met with dismissiveness (office managers are notorious for this), or a loop of referrals and dead ends. Not to mention the challenge of trying to figure out what you need in the first place.

Some of the accommodations I listed at the beginning of this article have become common, visible, and widely understood (ramps or captions, for example). This has made them relatively easy to ask for and to be aware whether they would be helpful to begin with. Institutions know what those accommodations are supposed to look like.

Then there are people struggling with their neurodivergent traits in a world that doesn’t already have a queue of relevant accommodation options at their ready. On occasion, there are some options available at school or work, but this is rarely a one-size-fits-all situation.

This makes me wonder how much brain power and creative thinking it takes to identify an individual’s needs, come up with a sensible solution and then export that to the masses to make it commonplace (maybe I’m headed for a research rabbit hole sometime soon). We are asking people whose brains are already overwhelmed with everything they need accommodations for to introspect to the point of knowing what they need in the moment, invent an accommodation, ask for it, and explain it well enough that people who have no personal need for it can understand.

Then, if all that labour goes well, an institution might decide to listen, take that feedback seriously, and implement the accommodation within its own systems (hopefully before the student, employee, etc. fails the course, drops out, loses the job, burns out, or shuts down).

This is a hell of a lot of labour to place on the person already facing the barrier, and is part of why I have started building an accommodations spreadsheet/checklist that will ideally lower the cognitive load for both the person asking for support and the person trying to provide it. The spreadsheet is designed to simplify the process by offering practical resources as well as explanations for why a given accommodation might be helpful.

Read the accommodations spreadsheet here (link).

Probationary Periods: The Illusion of Protection

Another time accommodations can become complicated, nuanced, and stressful is during probationary periods at work. Yes, there are protective laws to help disabled folks. Yes, discrimination is illegal. But the reality is, the odds are stacked, and most of us know that probation can be one of the riskiest times to disclose a disability or ask for an accommodation.

That early window at a new job is a vulnerable time. You’re learning the systems, the personalities, the unspoken rules (this last one in particular can feel impossible for some autistic folks). You’re trying to show that you’re competent and dependable. It can feel like the worst time to bring up an accommodation.

Some disclose right away, and some have the privilege and capacity to push through and hide their need for accommodations until this probationary window has closed.

Even when discrimination is illegal, probation creates room for plausible deniability. A termination can be framed as “not the right fit” or “performance concerns,” and it’s incredibly hard to prove whether disability disclosure played a role.

So yes, this happens far too often. And yes, many just stay silent about their needs and disabilities. They delay asking for flexible hours, written instructions, assistive tech, remote days, or sensory adjustments. They overcompensate, mask, hide mobility aids, and run themselves into the ground out of desperation for employment. They exhaust themselves trying to meet expectations in a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

The irony is that the very accommodations that might help them excel during probation are the ones they’re afraid to request.

From a mental health standpoint, this kind of situation creates chronic stress at the exact moment someone is trying to build stability. Instead of focusing on learning and contributing, they’re calculating risk. Instead of feeling supported, they’re scanning for signs that they’re “too much.”

Accommodations shouldn’t be treated like red flags during probation. They’re not signs of weakness or incompetence. They’re tools.

When workplaces (even unintentionally) make disclosure feel risky, they don’t just harm disabled employees; they lose out on talented people who could have thrived with a small amount of flexibility.

Probation should be about onboarding and growth. It shouldn’t function as a test of how well someone can hide who they are.

The Work From Home Wave: Unveiling Ableist Hypocrisy

For years, schools and companies flat-out refused accommodations like remote work.

Disabled students were told that attendance policies were “non-negotiable.” Employees with chronic illness or mobility limitations were told that working from home would “hurt collaboration,” “lower productivity,” or “just wasn’t possible.”

I’ve sat with many clients processing the sting of being told “no” in these situations. Some genuinely cannot get their work done in an office with fluorescent lighting (and the sounds of chatter, ringing phones, clicking keyboards, music playing, and so on).

I have seen people lose jobs over not being able to work in the environments employers refused to adapt, even when reasonable alternatives were available and suggested. Those adjustments could have turned their productive disabled employee into employee of the month.

Then 2020 happened.

Almost overnight, schools moved online. Entire companies went remote. Meetings moved to video platforms and phone calls. Those meetings that could’ve been emails, really did turn into emails. Deadlines became more flexible. Attendance policies softened. Workflows were redesigned. Systems that had been described as rigid, immovable, and essential suddenly turned out to be… adaptable. The impossible was done in record time. The world carried on.

That moment was deeply validating and, at the same time, deeply painful for many disabled people.

It showed, very clearly, that the problem had never been feasibility. It was willingness.

As disability advocates have rightly pointed out, when able-bodied people needed flexibility for their health and safety, institutions mobilized at lightning speed. When disabled people had been requesting similar flexibility for years, often to simply access education or maintain employment, they were told it was unreasonable, disruptive, and too expensive.

From a therapeutic lens, that kind of collective experience leaves a mark, whether we are immediately cognisant of it or not. It reinforces a narrative many of my neurodivergent and chronically ill clients already carry: my needs are inconvenient; I’m asking for too much; I am too much; “I should just push through; its not that bad.

Watching the world suddenly bend when the majority needed support can give rise to grief… not because the accommodations finally became more available, but because they were always available; they were just ignored and denied.

This isn’t about resentment toward in-person work, remote work, or flexibility. It’s an argument for equity. If we know systems can pivot, innovate, and restructure, then we also know that denying accommodations isn’t about practicality; it’s about priorities.

The events taking place during the pandemic lockdowns in North America cracked open a truth that disability communities have always known: accessibility isn’t a highly particular niche add-on; it’s a design choice.

When institutions choose flexibility, clarity, and multiple ways of participating, many different groups benefit. Parents benefit. Caregivers, immunocompromised folks, introverts, people with mental health challenges, and yes, the broader workforce, all benefit.

The takeaway isn’t “we shouldn’t have accommodated the masses.” It’s “we should have been doing this for disabled people all along.” It highlights the need for normalization and prioritization of accommodations when they are needed and asked for. This realization can feel bittersweet, but it’s also quite powerful.

Accommodations aren’t the Problem

This leaves us in this in-between space: grateful for the ramps, the captioning, the interpreters, the remote platforms, and the policies that exist on paper, while also painfully aware of how hard disabled people still have to work just to access what they are legally and ethically entitled to.

My clients are not asking for shortcuts or special treatment.

They are already doing the hard things! They are in therapy; they are reflecting; they are unlearning years of internalized ableism; they are navigating systems that generally work against them. They are researching, emailing, calling, following up, then following up, then following up again, all while masking, overperforming, advocating, and educating.

And then we expect them to prove again and again that their needs are valid. Being disabled and trying to get access to accommodations can feel like a full-time job on top of the work they’re already struggling with.

If there is one thing I hope readers take from this, it is the reminder that our society has not perfected accommodations. We are not even close to reaching the finish line, and there is no gold star. There is still so much room for removing barriers that never needed to be there in the first place. When we normalize and prioritize accessibility, we’re not doing disabled people a “favour.” We’re correcting an imbalance that should never have existed.

Yes, there is progress. Yes, there are laws and policies. There is still so much work to do.

Workplaces, schools, medical systems, government programs – the invitation is simple. Listen to disabled voices, believe them the first time, and build systems that don’t require people to burn out in order to participate.

Disabled folks have always been capable. They have always been creative, intelligent, resilient, and hardworking. Imagine what becomes possible when their energy is no longer spent fighting to exist in the room, but instead, is free to actually thrive there.

That’s the world I hope we keep moving toward. One where accommodations are not controversial, and they are not the problem; they just are.

Further Reading:

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

Book by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Dr. Devon Price

The Neurodivergent-Friendly Workbook of DBT Skills by Sonny Jane Wise

A Manual for Being Human by Dr. Sophie Mort

https://www.actcommunity.ca/information/workplace-accommodations-for-autistic-and-neurodivergent-adults/

https://www.coopertherapy.ca > Resources > Accommodations Checklist