Flexible work critics are using the same arguments that were used against disabled ramps and closed captioning. Equity of access should never be optional

The disability community saw unprecedented gains in employment during the pandemic, in large part due to the opportunities created by flexible work, which aligns well with the needs of people who experience “crip time.” Crip time challenges the non-disabled notion of time as fixed and linear–and recognizes that different bodies and minds experience time differently. This notion acknowledges that disabled people, including autistics, often need to adapt their schedules, routines, social interaction, and sensory tolerance to their own unique abilities and challenges.

At its very heart, disability accommodation boils down to the idea of “equity of access” which should never be optional. The disability community has long recognized this and had long been demanding the flexibility of a hybrid mode as a disability accommodation.

Pre-pandemic, we had been told that it was not possible or not financially viable. Yet these models ironically became “convenient” and “financially viable” overnight when the non-disabled world needed them.

Financial viability is actually a very tired and worn-out excuse. It was the reason used to justify not building ramps and other architectural modifications for the physically disabled before the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 (ADA). It was the same reason used to justify not implementing closed captioning for the deaf. But ask any young mother with a stroller or the average Joe with a suitcase how helpful these features are.

It is therefore troubling to witness the push seen in companies such as Twitter and Amazon to revert to in-person work. It sets a bad precedent that autism accommodations are optional and afforded only when convenient in critical spaces like education and employment. Instead of getting rid of hybrid, we need to work on tech advances that can lower costs and ease the implementation of hybrid models.

Hybrid as an accommodation gets to the heart of some of the core features of autism: social communication challenges and sensory sensitivities.

More importantly, hybrid environments allow a large segment of the autistic population to access spaces and opportunities they never could before, bringing about unimagined levels of accessibility, especially in the areas of employment and education. And it also allowed the disabled to be more productive.

Mainstream discussions around remote and hybrid employment models often focus on productivity, or the perceived reduced networking and socialization. Paradoxically, these very reasons serve to increase productivity for many disabled people, including the autism community.

I’m a Ph.D. student who wears the dual hats of an autistic who is an autism researcher. My brand of autism presents significant obstacles to my everyday living, with limited speaking ability and health issues just being the tip of the iceberg.

In my field, I face challenges around traveling to academic conferences. If the conferences were hybrid, autistic participants could have the option of attending remotely; or if they did make it to that site, choose to attend select sessions from the hotel room, depending on the sensory capability need of the hour, instead of having to navigate an extended, stressful in-person experience for three to four days.

Travel involves the chaos of airports, delayed and claustrophobic flights, strange hotels, unfamiliar food, unfamiliar spaces, and unreliable access to healthcare. It’s the ultimate disruption to the autistic desire for the comfort of familiar routines and spaces.

“Social” only works in small doses for many autistics like me, given that social-communication issues are one of the core diagnostic features of autism. By their very nature, in-person-only conferences and workplaces mean extended periods of having to turn magically social.

The association between sensory overstimulation and autism is not a new idea. A large conference is the very embodiment of sensory bombardment. Poster presentation rooms at conferences are like a cacophony of a hundred people competing to be heard over each other. I could easily become overwhelmed and entirely unable to function. Even if a “sensory break” room were offered, what are the chances that 20 other autistics require that unfamiliar room at the very same time that I do?

Even within the autism community, there are disagreements over what comprises reasonable accommodations for autism. In fact, accommodations could clash over something seemingly as simple as lighting, with one autistic needing dim lighting and another bright lighting for better visual-spatial perception. Some require emotional support dogs while others are terrified of dogs. What would the power equation be? Which autistic’s need in the room gets prioritized? And who gets to decide? These are important questions that we in the autism community need to grapple with.

For us, and for many workers, hybrid work is not a convenience–it’s a necessary and reasonable accommodation.

Hari Srinivasan is a Ph.D. Neuroscience Student at Vanderbilt, a PD Soros Fellow, a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project, a Fellow at the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, and a non-federal member of NIMH’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee.

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