Accommodation and Compliance Series: Employees with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Memory:

Individuals with ASD may experience memory deficits that can affect their ability to complete tasks, remember job duties, or recall daily actions or activities. They also may have difficulty recognizing faces.

• Provide written instructions
• Allow additional training time for new tasks
• Offer training refreshers
• Prompt employee with verbal cues
• Use a flowchart to describe the steps involved in a complicated task (such as powering up a system, closing down the facility, logging into a computer, etc.)
• Provide pictorial cues
• Use post-it notes as reminders of important dates or tasks
• Safely and securely maintain paper lists of crucial information such as passwords
• Allow employee to use voice activated recorder to record verbal instructions
• Provide employee directory with pictures or use nametags and door/cubicle name markers to help employee remember coworkers’ faces and names
• Encourage employee to ask (or email) work-related questions