One of the major actions to come out of disability activism is what is termed “reasonable accommodations” - which refers to changes to enable people with disabilities to be a part of, and function in, particular places.
This is commonly interpreted around access, as someone in a wheelchair is visible, but it goes beyond that to people with non-apparent disabilities, and ensuring the ability to fully be part of places and activities, whether that be work, entertainment, etc.
As an example, I used to part of the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) committee of a water industry organisation (I left soon after I retired). They began each meeting by asking if there were any reasonable accommodations that meeting participants required, and in one we had a guest who had impaired visibility, and as a result used a screen reader: as that meant any messages put into the chat were read out at the same time others were speaking, they asked if we could defer using the chat function while they were participating.
Reasonable accommodations are often not something expensive or difficult: they may just require a little informed consideration - or, in my grumpy parlance, being decent.
Sometimes being decent is required even without disability considerations.
As an example, when we moved into our house, we had a house warming, and two people somehow thought it was acceptable for them to go into my bedroom - which had a cat that was scared of people in it, apart from it being personal space.
Having the basic manners and decency to respect people’s private, personal space does not require any justification: what was done was a gross invasion of privacy.
Similar to that, is people rearranging possessions to suit the way the busybody prefers - which, for anyone with a modicum of common sense is clearly absurd! People have preferences based on what suits them best.
It is like a right handed person setting up a left handed person's workspace in a way that suits the right hander (did you know that the sides of the mouse allocated to functions can be changed to suit handedness?).
In the context of some disabilities, this video goes into that aspect quite well:
“5 Ways People Try to Help Someone With ADHD That Aren’t Actually Helpful (and What to Do Instead)” https://youtu.be/3kS3gPMQuP8?si=y8_mcZZfIcvfjCJv excellent comments about not assuming something that works for you will work for others!!! (includes an ad)
I have long preferred being able to see things so I can use them - I hate hiding things in cupboards and wardrobes, and consider that, frankly, amathiac as it means visitors/guests, for instance, do not know what you have in a kitchen, for example, unless you go rifling through all the cupboards.
Other people respecting that does NOT need a formal diagnosis of a problem in the person whose space it is: it just requires the visitor to be decent, rather than arrogant, self-centred, presumptuous, and amathiac.
Even worse is the anger some people have expressed when I state the truth that I can have a coffee and still go to sleep afterwards. A friend with a degree in genetics told me there is a specific gene which means some people are not affected by caffeine, but are at an elevated risk of cancer if they are carnist and eat overcooked meat. Another possible explanation is the dopamine hit on ADHD brains that enables sleep - as jokingly portrayed at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cXqCdWoiYk0.
I’ve often wondered about the anger, and perhaps those people have invested so much of their self image in pretty picture of them being smart about sleep hygiene by avoiding caffeine and doing various other rules that my statement threatens their poorly founded self esteem.
Bad luck - your flawed worldview does not justify being angry or threatening when it is shown to be flawed by a truth.
I wish to make it quite clear that the requirements around decency also applies to people without disabilities.
As an example, an appalling (worst ever) manager I worked for in the 80s used to ring us at home when we were ill, so I did same to him - to annoyance of his wife, who I told if she was unhappy then get him to stop doing that to us (she was a doctor, by the way).
Now, I could see the social expectation in that company was to go along with that managers behaviour (it was supposedly about a [sociopathic] version of “dedication”), which I could equally see was amathiac (see https://youtu.be/NUAGnEvl1_Q?si=kU61g7OkjN5F25C7&t=447) - or, in another word, wrong.
So I refused to do so ... and was considered aggro for standing up for decency - and stupid (their terminology at the time) for not going along with abuse ...
Go figure ...
Neurotypicals should be a lot more reluctant to point that finger ...
Going back to the concept of accommodations, whether on the basis of disability or just human decency ... anyone who gets irritated at having to accept even minor differences in other people needs to get a grip: that is life. Get over yourself, and start being a decent person, accepting of the rich variety that makes life.
See also https://gnwmythrsglossary.blogspot.com/2023/09/aspects-of-character-content-warning.html.
PS - even in places where legal protections against discrimination don't exist, workplace accommodations often result in improved productivity and/or reduced staff turnover/claims for compensation, and those need to ALWAYS be considered against the cost of any accommodations that do involve expense.
Where anti-discrimination laws exist, you must comply with the laws. If you do so graciously, you are a better human being, in my opinion, than if you do so with a lot of whingeing and complaining.
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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk.
