I still hear reasonable adjustments described as though they are little favours added on after the real work has been designed. Someone gets extra time, a quieter room, information in a different format or permission to work in a slightly different way, and the conversation starts drifting towards fairness as if fairness requires everybody to encounter exactly the same barriers.
That has never made much sense to me. If the outcome we care about is good social work, thoughtful judgement, effective learning or a piece of work completed to the required standard, then creating unnecessary cognitive obstacles around that outcome does not make the standard more rigorous. It simply measures how well somebody can navigate the obstacle as well as doing the thing we actually wanted from them.
My own adjustments are often wonderfully ordinary. Written information helps because it reduces the amount I have to hold in working memory. Clear priorities help because ‘everything is urgent’ is almost impossible to organise around. Space between meetings helps because transitions use energy. Fidgets help me listen. A quieter environment sometimes gives me back enough filtering capacity to think properly. None of those things lower the quality expected of me.
The important part is that adjustments need to be connected to the actual barrier rather than copied from a generic list. Two people with ADHD may need completely different things, and the same person may need different things on different days or for different tasks. Support becomes much more useful when we ask what is getting in the way here rather than what people with this diagnosis are supposed to need.
That is also why adjustment conversations should not end once something has been agreed. A strategy can work brilliantly until the job changes, the environment changes or the person simply finds that the amount of effort required to maintain the strategy is now part of the problem. Review is not evidence that the adjustment failed. It is part of making sure it still does what it was supposed to do.
I think the phrase special treatment causes particular harm because it encourages people to minimise what they need in order to avoid appearing demanding. The result is often that somebody spends enormous amounts of invisible energy compensating for a barrier that could have been changed cheaply and easily, and everyone congratulates the system because the person still managed to perform.
Barry would probably point out that nobody accuses one strand of the web of receiving special treatment because it is anchored differently from another. Different threads need different support to hold the same structure. That seems a much more useful version of fairness to me.