Autism and the right to a hypersensitivity-friendly workspace
Open accessAbstract
Many individuals on the autism spectrum are hypersensitive to certain sensory stimuli. For this group, as well as for non-autistic individuals with sensory processing disorders, being exposed to e.g. fluorescent lights, perfume odours, and various sounds and noises can be real torment. In this article, I consider the normative implications of such offence for the design of office spaces, which is a topic that has not received any attention from philosophers. After identifying different ways in which the senses of hypersensitive workers might be protected within these spaces, I show that many of such accommodations can be made at reasonable cost, before arguing that doing so ought to be a legal requirement.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Where sensory demands become difficult to manage, particularly within high-stimulation environments, cognitive strain may increase and sustained engagement in work may become more difficult.
“Where sensory demands become difficult to manage, particularly within high-stimulation environments, cognitive strain may increase and sustained engagement in work may become more difficult (Dark, 2023; de Vries, 2021)”
From The system-level organisational design framework: a neuro-cognitive trait interaction approach to workplace inclusion for autistic people (2026) · cites this paper as de Vries, 2021
Many autistic people experience variation in the processing of stimuli such as light, sound, touch, and smell.
“Many autistic people experience variation in the processing of stimuli such as light, sound, touch, and smell (de Vries, 2021)”
From The system-level organisational design framework: a neuro-cognitive trait interaction approach to workplace inclusion for autistic people (2026) · cites this paper as de Vries, 2021
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 34 · Cited by 33
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Grandin, T. (2009). Thinking in Pictures. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Moss, S., and Malin, D. (1998). Public Funding for Disability Accommodations: A Rational Solution to Rational Discrimination and the Disabilities of the ADA. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 33, 197-236.
- Authors
- de Vries, B.
- Affiliations
- Umeå University and KU Leuven
- ORCID
- de Vries, Bouke
- Venue
- Public Health Ethics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2021-08-01
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 281-287
- ISSN
- 1754-9973 (ISSN-L)
- 1754-9981
- PMC
- PMC8661075
- OpenAlex
- W4200452343
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 3.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Public Health Ethics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (publishedVersion)
- Lirias (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- DiVA at Umeå University (Umeå University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Swedish Research Council (2018-00679)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Education and Employment
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Business Law and Ethics
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, sensory hypersensitivity, workplace accommodations, office design, sensory processing disorders, reasonable accommodation, occupational health
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
