10/04/2023
I tried to capture visually the difference that accommodations can make. When we go through our days, lots of niggly things that seem small can build up and mean that one more demand can result in overwhelm. With accommodations, things are still there in the background but supports are in place and so the same demand won't have the same impact.
This is highly simplified and of course on different days different factors can have more or less of an impact, but hopefully you find it useful.
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Image description: a 3 panel comic with a brown background. The heading reads ‘Accommodations make a difference’, below the heading text says ‘The ability to do a task can be impacted by many factors. On any given day, the combination that results in overload can be different.
Simple accommodations can increase someone's enjoyment of, or capacity and ability to do, a task.’ The first panel has a scale from 0-100 with different coloured boxes from green at the bottom to red at the top, the boxes in ascending order are: tight clothes, bright lights, multiple noise sources, hunger, strong perfume, didn’t sleep well, need a break, don’t understand task, high pain levels. The top box sits on top about to fill up the scale to 100 – the box says ‘someone asks a question.’ Above this text says: One more task demand or something unexpected could result in overwhelm/ meltdown for this person. Middle panel: a bulleted list says ‘What if the same person has: Taken a break, Had a snack recently, Can wear comfy clothes to work, Has been given clear task demands, Colleagues don't wear strong perfume, Can wear noise cancelling headphones’. Below this are some of the coloured boxes from the first panel all smaller with a spiky circle that says ‘these factors now have less impact.’ Third panel: text at the top says ‘With accommodations in place, the same demand, 'someone asking a question', doesn't have the same impact.’ This is the difference simple accommodations can make. There is the 0-100 scale but now only 3 boxes (bright lights, didn’t sleep well, high pain levels) are filled in, a yellow box (someone asks a question) fits on top and doesn’t cause overwhelm – this is the difference simple accommodations can make.
