THE GENERATION THAT ASKS

Gen Z employees request flexible or reduced schedules (46%), shift changes (32%), and remote work (26%) for neurodiversity-related needs. They lead on mental health accommodations (31%) and are the first generation to cite neurodiversity – ADHD, autism, dyslexia – as a significant driver (11%). Older generations accessed neurodiversity-related accommodations at much lower rates (AbsenceSoft 2026 Leave and Accommodations Employee Experience Report, source).

This isn't Gen Z inventing a problem. It's Gen Z naming one the rest of us were told to hide.

I'm 52. I was diagnosed autistic in my 40s, after years of working around sensory overload, executive function gaps, and social-communication deficits I had no name for and no right to acknowledge. I didn't ask for accommodations because I didn't know they existed, and the few times I tried to explain what I needed, the answer was "everyone has to deal with difficult coworkers" or "that's just how open offices work."

Masking wasn't a choice. It was the price of employment.

The data shows the divide: 68% of neurodivergent employees had no idea what accommodations they could ask for. 51% didn't know who to talk to (Understood.org 2025 Neurodiversity at Work survey, source). The law says reasonable accommodations are required. The reality is most of us were never told the law applied to us, and asking felt like admitting you couldn't do the job.

Gen Z asks. Not because they're more disabled than the rest of us – because they're the first generation that was told they could.

EEOC merit resolutions related to autism more than doubled from 0.4% of total merit resolutions in 2016 to 1.5% in 2023 (Ogletree Deakins analysis of EEOC data, source). There were 488 autism-related ADA charges filed in fiscal year 2023, compared to just 53 filed ten years earlier (Bloomberg Law analysis of EEOC data, source).

That's not an epidemic of new diagnoses. That's decades of people who were told to figure it out on their own, finally being told the law was always supposed to protect them.

In the environments where I worked, asking for a shift change or a quieter workspace would have been treated as a liability risk. I've sat in mandatory team-building exercises designed around extrovert social norms, watching neurodivergent colleagues visibly shut down, and nobody named what was happening because naming it meant admitting you were one of them.

The system didn't break when Gen Z started asking for accommodations. The system always excluded us. Gen Z just stopped pretending it was fine.

The older generations in that survey aren't accessing accommodations at lower rates because we don't need them. We're not accessing them because we spent our careers being told that needing them meant you didn't belong.

I'm autistic. I have ADHD. I've spent most of my life compensating for deficits I was never allowed to name, in environments built for people whose brains work nothing like mine. The accommodations Gen Z is asking for – flexible schedules, remote work, shift changes – aren't special treatment. They're the minimum adjustments that let neurodivergent people do the work they were hired to do, without spending half their energy pretending they're not disabled.

Gen Z didn't create the need. They created the expectation that the need should be met.

The surge in autism-related ADA claims isn't proof the workplace became less accommodating. It's proof we finally have a generation that was told they're allowed to expect better.

I'm one of the older workers who didn't ask. I masked until it broke me, and by the time I had the language for what I needed, I was dying and the career was over.

Gen Z is asking now. The rest of us are watching to see if the answer is different this time.