The Compassion Gap
Why we accommodate some disabilities and punish others.
A research series by Mark Friese
Broken by Design
This is a series about systems that don't work. Not because they're under-resourced or badly managed — though they often are — but because the assumptions built into their design produce predictable harm for neurodivergent and disabled people.
The harm isn't a failure of the system. It's an output.
The Loop
Four pieces. One closed system.
Each stage follows from the one before. The final stage does not correct the first. There is no exit.
The structural bias creates the conditions for denied support. Denied support creates the conditions for financial penalty. Financial penalty creates the conditions for complaint. And the complaint process reproduces the original barriers. The loop does not close until the fourth piece.
The Competence Trap
Survival strategies developed to navigate hostile systems become evidence you don't need support. Your competence disqualifies you.
Measured by Neglect
How employers fail to support neurodivergent staff, then punish them for the gap they created.
The Accountability Gap
Ombudsmen, regulators, and tribunals reproduce the same barriers they're supposed to remedy. The loop closes.
↻ The cycle restarts. The bias persists.
Also in the series
The Same Story, Told Three Ways
Education, employment, and insurance fail disabled people using the same structure — the same legal framework, the same implementation gap, the same regulatory inaction. It's not three problems. It's one problem with three addresses.
Full Research
The Compassion Gap — White Paper
UK Disability Policy vs Practice
The complete evidence base behind the series. A research paper examining equal accommodation of invisible disabilities across education and employment, with 60+ sources spanning neuroscience, multi-morbidity mortality data, UK exclusion statistics, and evidence-based interventions.
PDF Harvard citations throughout March 2026
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About
Mark Friese MEng MIET
Researcher and writer — Auchterarder, Scotland
Mark is a neurodivergent researcher, writer, and advocate based in Auchterarder. He writes at the intersection of academic research, policy analysis, and lived experience — examining how UK systems create, sustain, and fail to remedy disadvantage for neurodivergent and disabled people.
The Broken by Design series draws on academic research, legal analysis, regulatory complaints, and primary source evidence from navigating the systems it describes. It argues that the outcomes experienced by neurodivergent and disabled people are not failures of individual systems but predictable consequences of design choices — and that design choices can be changed.