Siemion

A very good video - it shows just how difficult employment can be for autistic people, even when they are very capable. Congratulations on your new job; I do hope that it goes well for you.

The assumption that people with ASD’s cannot teamwork is nonsense. There is a well-established theory of teamworking (http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8), which identifies various roles within a team, several of which could easily be filled by someone with an ASD. When employers say that they are assessing for teamworking capabilities, what they in fact commonly test for is sociability. This is, prima facie, discriminatory, because sociability is rarely required for carrying out the actual functions of a job, and people with ASD’s will be disadvantaged because of social impairment. The point is that teamworking has nothing to do with being sociable. The best response, when asked to demonstrate teamworking capabilities, is to ask the interlocutor what role, or roles, within a team he/she has in mind. This will probably be met with blank incomprehension. One can then go on to demonstrate one’s capability for fulfilling the role of “Plant”, or “Specialist” (but will have to explain what these terms mean). Siemion

On the subject of reasonable adjustments :- The duty to make “reasonable adjustments” is contained in Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010. It covers three areas, “a provision, criterion or practice” of the employer, “a physical feature” and “but for the provision of an auxiliary aid”. This language (colloquially, “lawyer speak”) is designed to cover virtually anything that can happen, or affect, a person in the course of employment, or in applying for employment. There is some published guidance on what this means - see link (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-guidance ) and scroll down to the booklet at the bottom of the page. This is, however, not terribly helpful, as it is written in very general terms and is not “ASD friendly”. The manager’s comment in Aeolinne’s post of 08/04/12 could reflect (although it does not necessarily do so, as the circumstances giving rise to it are not apparent) a classic failure to make a reasonable adjustment for someone with an ASD. This is because, where a person without an ASD is asked to do something they may intuit that something more than what is asked for is required whereas the person with an ASD is likely to do exactly what is asked for, and nothing more, or less. The reasonable adjustment required would be for the manager to communicate with the person with an ASD in a very clear, and precise, manner. (In terms of the Equality Act, this would be an adjustment to a “practice” of the employer, i.e. the employer’s “practice” of how it communicates instructions to employees via the agency of its managers.) In the USA, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) contains a provision requiring employers to make “accommodations” for disabled employees. This is fundamentally the same as the duty to make “reasonable adjustments” in the UK. The US Department of Labour has an agency – JAN (Job Accommodation Network) – which provides advice to employers, and employees, on what accommodations might be required in particular circumstances. It publishes a wide range of booklets, on various disabilities, giving many examples of what accommodations may be required in relation to particular disabilities. It has one on ASD’s (it used to be for Asperger’s Syndrome, but the title has evidently been changed to reflect DSM-V). Here is a link to it - http://askjan.org/media/autism.htm . The examples of the sorts of accommodations that might be required for someone with an ASD would, I am confident, also be reasonable adjustments, under the Equality Act, in the UK. Siemion