Know Your Barriers. Know Your Adjustments. Use Your Voice.

This ADHD Awareness Month, I would like to talk about reasonable adjustments, not simply what organisations should be doing, but what we can do to understand and communicate our own needs.

The Equality Act 2010 places a legal duty on organisations in certain circumstances to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. For services and public functions, that duty is anticipatory: organisations should be thinking about barriers before a disabled person even comes through their door.

Yet my lived experience has taught me that what should happen and what actually happens can be very different.

I have ADHD and dyslexia. I have asked for adjustments, explained my barriers and still found myself trying to navigate systems that were inaccessible to me. I have said, “I cannot manage this portal, I need another way of communicating.” Yet time and time again my voice has simply not been heard.

In my view, fifteen years after the Equality Act became law, we need to ask whether the system goes far enough. Disabled and neurodivergent people should not have to reach crisis point (or contemplate complaints or legal action) before accessibility is taken seriously.

But while we campaign for organisations to do better, I believe there is something powerful we can do ourselves.

Know yourself.

Having ADHD does not automatically mean that you will know what your reasonable adjustment needs are. So you can ask yourself: What creates a barrier for me? What happens when I am overwhelmed? How do I best receive complicated information? What helps me process it? What do I need in meetings? What makes communication accessible to me?

My adjustments will not necessarily be yours. Personally, I may need things talked through by telephone whilst another person with ADHD might need everything in writing. The principle extends across the wider neurodivergent community: same diagnosis does not mean same needs.

Then use your voice, preferably from the very beginning of your engagement with an organisation: “This is my barrier. This is the adjustment I need. Please record it.” Ask what reasonable adjustments they offer. Ask for their equality, diversity or accessibility policy. If someone says, “We can't do that,” don't be afraid to ask what alternatives they can offer.

Taking ownership does not mean accepting responsibility for an inaccessible system. The legal duty belongs where the law places it. Ownership means understanding ourselves well enough to recognise our barriers, communicate what helps and advocate for our needs.

And organisations need to listen, record and act.

My four words for this ADHD Awareness Month are:

ASK what reasonable adjustments are available and start the conversation.

RECORD your individual needs and agree on the adjustments that will help.

ACT by putting those adjustments into practice.

REVIEW what's working and what might need to change.

Reasonable adjustments are a shared conversation. Organisations have responsibilities, and we have a voice.

What are your four words and what do they mean to you?