THE NUMBERS NOBODY WANTED TO SEE
488. That is how many autism-related Americans with Disabilities Act charges the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received in fiscal year 2023 . Ten years earlier – fiscal 2013 – that number was 53. Twenty years earlier, in 2003, it was 14. I am one data point somewhere in that curve, though I never filed. I just left. The jump is not because autism suddenly became common. It has always been common. The jump is because a generation finally showed up expecting the law to mean what it says, and discovering it mostly does not. 488 charges in a single fiscal year is not a spike. It is the system catching up to decades of people who tried to make it work, were told they were not team players, and were managed out before they could become a problem. Gen Z walked in with ADA rights framed as exactly that – rights, not favors – and when the accommodation became the reason for the performance improvement plan, they filed. The EEOC data does not break down outcomes, but separate...