The four-day week is often framed as a wellbeing and work-life balance solution.

But for many disabled people, it’s something far more fundamental.

It’s an access issue.

The standard 40-hour, five-day week was never designed with disabled bodies or fluctuating health conditions in mind. It assumes predictable energy, consistent stamina, and no competing medical or administrative demands. That assumption quietly excludes a significant proportion of the population.

If we want to talk seriously about inclusive work, we need to talk about time.

The 40-Hour Week Was Never Neutral

When we talk about a four-day week, we’re not talking about perks or lifestyle choices. We’re talking about making work fit around real lives.

The default working week was designed for a very particular worker at a specific moment in history: a male breadwinner in the industrial era, with no real responsibilities outside paid work. The labour of sustaining life, health and households happened invisibly somewhere else — usually done by women.

That model doesn’t reflect gender norms today. But it also doesn’t reflect the realities of disabled people’s lives.

The 40-hour week assumes a worker with unlimited stamina. It assumes predictable energy. It assumes no interruptions from pain, fatigue, distress or medical needs. It assumes a body and mind that simply show up every day and perform consistently.

By design, that excludes many of us.

Time Is Not Distributed Equally

Government data consistently shows that many disabled people report limitations in the amount of work they can sustain. Around one in three disabled people live with an energy-limiting condition — myself included.

For those of us with energy-limiting conditions, rest is not optional. It has to be carefully woven around work in order to make work sustainable. A model of work that doesn’t permit enough rest time is as much of a socially constructed barrier as stairs or a lift out of order.

Disabled people do not have the same number of usable hours in a week as non-disabled people.

Even without an energy-limiting condition, there is the extra, invisible labour that nearly all disabled people have to do simply to be able to work at all.

The Disability Admin Tax

There is what’s often called the disability admin tax — the additional labour of negotiating adjustments and managing processes such as Access to Work claims. There may be personal assistants to coordinate. Appointments to attend. Medication and treatment regimes to manage.

All of that is real work.

It is what enables paid employment. But it isn’t recognised in the structure of the standard working week.

When we talk about reducing working time, we are not asking for something extra. We are acknowledging that disabled people’s time is already partially allocated elsewhere — to sustaining our health and maintaining the conditions that make employment possible.

A four-day week, therefore, makes immediate sense. It acknowledges something very simple: whether we have an energy-limiting condition or not, many disabled people are operating with a different time budget.

The Power of Universal Design

One of the most powerful things about a four-day week is that it works through universal design.

If everyone moves to a shorter week, disabled people can avoid the risk of disclosing their disability in order to ask for fewer hours as a reasonable adjustment.

We know that disclosure carries risk. Those of us with invisible impairments may not be believed. If we are believed, we risk being perceived as less capable or less reliable — and being passed over for promotion or opportunities.

A universal four-day week removes the need for some disabled people to “earn” flexibility through disclosure.

It reduces friction. It makes work more accessible not only for disabled people, but also for carers, parents and older workers.

That is why the four-day week is so compelling.

But it is not the full solution.

The Risk of Moving the Line of Exclusion

We have to be careful not to turn one structural reform into another rigid, one-size-fits-all model.

Because disabled people do not all need the same thing when it comes to flexible working.

Working from home and having control over working time are just as important for many disabled people as reducing working days.

Even if we remove inaccessible transport from the equation, many of us need to work from home in order to implement the pacing and symptom-management strategies that make us productive. These are not strategies that can easily be practised in most office environments.

And some disabled people need far fewer hours than a four-day week would provide. That should not mean exclusion from meaningful, well-paid work.

If we stop at four days, we risk simply moving the line of exclusion a little further out.

Research consistently shows that disabled workers often need a combination of flexibilities: reduced hours, flexible scheduling, and remote or hybrid working. Remove one element, and access can collapse.

Why Job Crafting Matters

There is another risk. If organisations move to a four-day week without redesigning roles, the result can be work intensification rather than genuine access.

Reduced time does not automatically mean reduced workload.

This is where job crafting becomes critical.

Structured job crafting allows teams and managers to rethink tasks, outputs and priorities. It can involve redistributing responsibilities, clarifying what is essential, and aligning work more closely with individual strengths and capacities.

Without this work, a four-day week can simply compress pressure into fewer days. For disabled employees — particularly those with fluctuating conditions — that compression can undermine sustainability.

A shorter week has transformative potential. But only if it is accompanied by thoughtful role design and genuine flexibility.

Beyond Shorter Weeks: The Case for Flex Plus

In my research with King’s College London, I developed the Flex Plus model to describe what genuinely inclusive flexibility looks like.

Flex Plus recognises that reduced hours, flexible scheduling, and remote or hybrid working together create access. It is the interaction between these elements that matters.

Reduced hours alone are not enough. Remote working alone is not enough. Flexible start and finish times alone are not enough.

But together, they can create the conditions in which disabled people can thrive in work rather than constantly firefighting to stay in it.

The absence of these flexibilities — especially at the point of hire — is a significant contributor to the disability employment gap.

If we are serious about closing that gap, we need to normalise flexibility in all its forms, not treat it as an exception granted on request.

The Future of Work Must Fit Real Lives

The four-day week is exciting. It challenges outdated assumptions about time, value and productivity. It pushes back against the idea that long hours are the measure of commitment.

But shorter weeks alone will not dismantle structural exclusion.

There will always be a need for personalised flexibility. Employers and line managers need a better understanding of long-term and fluctuating health conditions. Rights to reasonable adjustments must be better enforced. And flexibility must be destigmatised.

The future of work isn’t just shorter weeks. It’s work that finally fits real lives.

For disabled people, that means designing systems around the reality of energy, health and hidden labour — not around outdated assumptions about the ideal worker.

A four-day week could be transformative.

But only if we go further.