Neurodivergent glossary
Reasonable Accommodations
Changes to a work environment, schedule, or process that allow a person with a disability or neurodivergent condition to perform their job effectively—a legal right, not a favor.
What it means
Reasonable accommodations are modifications or adjustments to a job, work environment, or hiring process that enable a qualified person with a disability to participate equally. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and similar laws in other countries, employers are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations unless doing so would cause "undue hardship."
For neurodivergent employees, accommodations might include written instructions instead of verbal ones, noise-canceling headphones in open offices, flexible scheduling, permission to work from home, extra time on written tasks, or regular check-ins instead of annual reviews. The key word is "reasonable"—the accommodation needs to be effective for the employee without fundamentally altering the nature of the job.
Many neurodivergent people don't request accommodations because they don't know they can, fear being stigmatized, or don't have a formal diagnosis. Others have found that framing requests in terms of productivity ("I do my best work when...") rather than disability ("I need this because of my ADHD") can be more effective in workplaces that aren't yet disability-literate.
In practice
What this can look like
- You ask your manager if you can wear noise-canceling headphones during focus work. They agree, and your productivity doubles—not because you were slacking before, but because the open office was making it impossible for your brain to filter out background noise.
- A student with ADHD receives extended time on exams. A classmate calls it "unfair." The accommodation doesn't give an advantage—it levels a playing field that was already tilted.
Context
Clinical context
The ADA defines disability broadly enough to include many neurodivergent conditions. Accommodations are determined through an interactive process between the employee and employer.
Community note
There's a growing movement to shift from individual accommodation requests to universal design—building workplaces and classrooms that work for diverse brains by default, so fewer people need to disclose and ask for special treatment.
NeuroDiversion 2027
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Three days in Austin with people who get it.
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