By having an Accommodations process you are mitigating your risk in case of a law suit, you are complying with ADA regulations, and you are being a good employer to your employee.

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Three things need to be included…1)Analyze what the barrier is.  2) Work with the person who is requesting the accommodation.  3) Identify possibilities  4) Assess the effectiveness of the chosen possibility.  For more detailed information and or a customized Accommodation Plan, request an Accommodation Training for your HR department.

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The average accommodation costs $500 or less and many are free.  There may be some accommodations that have a one time cost that is more than $500 such as computer programs, special chairs or desks, ramps, etc.  But on average they are $500 or less. And remember the accommodation just has to remove the barrier, it doesn’t need to be the most expensive accommodation available.  There are also tax deductions available to most companies for these accommodations.

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YES.  By law you have to make reasonable accommodations for everyone who asks for an accommodation.

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If you have a solid accommodation plan, have followed that plan and have documentation of accommodations, extra training etc, then you can definitely fire an employee who is not fulfilling the required job tasks.  Make sure you have documentation so that if the employee decides to sue for discrimination you will have proof that you tried all you could to make the situation work.

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The EEOC defines “undue hardship” as it relates to ADA as
“Undue hardship refers not only to financial difficulty, but to reasonable accommodations that are unduly extensive, substantial, or disruptive, or those that would fundamentally alter the nature or operation of the business.(17) An employer must assess on a case-by-case basis whether a particular reasonable accommodation would cause undue hardship.”

To determine an “undue hardship” companies must look at and document several factors including:

• the nature and cost of the accommodation needed;
• the overall financial resources of the facility making the reasonable accommodation; the number of persons employed at this facility; the effect on expenses and resources of the facility;
• the overall financial resources, size, number of employees, and type and location of facilities of the employer (if the facility involved in the reasonable accommodation is part of a larger entity);
• the type of operation of the employer, including the structure and functions of the workforce, the geographic separateness, and the administrative or fiscal relationship of the facility involved in making the accommodation to the employer; and
• the impact of the accommodation on the operation of the facility.

So as you can see, it will be different for every company based on many factors. The important thing is that you do your due diligence and document all your reasons why an accommodation doesn’t work or why you chose a more cost effective accommodation over a more expensive accommodation.

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First, research shows that employees with disabilities are 20% less likely to have accidents/workman compensation claims than their typical counterparts (based on research).  Second, if you are hiring someone for a job, say in a warehouse with lots of moving parts, there would be certain skills required for the job.  So you would only hire an employee who has a disability who has that skill set.  If they have said skill set they should be safe in the environment.  Anyone, regardless of ability, can get injured on the job.  It is unfair and false to say that people with disabilities are more likely to have an accident due to work environment.

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An accessible job description is a description that does not use verbiage that exclude those who may use accommodations that are not “typical” to do their work. Statements such as “manual dexterity to type”, “ability to speak in order to communicate” or my favorite “ability to lift 25 lbs” can alienate qualified candidates who have disabilities. In this day and age we have technology that does not require “manual dexterity” in order to type a document or work a computer. There is technology that aids in those who are deaf to communicate to the hearing via the use of verbal words. So it is important to be aware of the verbiage you are using.

Similarly, many job descriptions go on forever with things the company “would like” the employee to have. Research shows that every job has 5-7 core tasks that are required for that employee to be an asset to the company. This is a best practice overall, not just for accessibility. The shorter and more specific the job description the easier it is for EVERYONE to decide if they qualify and want to apply for the position.

Please take the time to look over ALL your job descriptions and see how accessible they are when it comes to how things are worded.

Equal means that everyone gets exactly the same supports and accommodations.  Picture a tall, a medium height, and a short person trying to see over a fence.  You give all of them a 6 inch box to stand on.  Now the tall person can see over.  The medium heights person has to stand on their toes, put in a lot of effort to see, and can barely see over.  The short person can’t see over no matter what.  That is EQUAL.  EQUITABLE is giving the tall person nothing because they can already see over the fence,  the medium height person a nine inch box so they can see over with ease, and the short person a 12 inch box so they can see over easily as well.  For more detail on how this pertains to employment read Equality vs Equity (coming soon)

There is no evidence that race impacts a person with a disability being hired.  It appears that disability trumps all other possible discriminating factors.  Within the disability community there is discrimination regarding people of color with disabilities and white people with disabilities just like in our community there is still discrimination between typical people of color and typical white people.  Disability doesn’t discriminate, it affects all cultures, races, religions, and gender identities.

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Government contractors/subcontractors need to have and implement affirmative actions plans to increase the total number of employees with disclosed disabilities up to 7% of your workforce.

For more information : https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/section503.htm

We will provide training anywhere in the world. People who have disabilities are everywhere so we are too Thanks to technology some training can be done via teleconference and the rest can be done in person.

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Our custom trainings are created to fit your needs. We have a proprietary process called I.D.E.A. We Identify your current resources. We Define your needs. We Empower and Educate you and your staff. Then we Assess how the implementation of your plan is working and tweak it as needed. Some plans are lengthy, others are just a few trainings. You get to decide how much or little you need at the present time. There is always room to grow. So weather you want to implement hiring employees with disabilities company wide, or just in one department, we can create the perfect plan for you to hire, retain, train and include employees with disabilities in your workforce. Just contact us for a 30 min consultation.

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Alternative text, or “alt text” describes the content of images, graphs and charts. It should be added to every image that conveys meaning in instructional and communications materials including websites, word processing documents, and slide presentations.

Alt Text should be as descriptive as possible. A bad example would be, if you had a picture of a pie chart with 4 quadrants with percentages in them and you said, “picture of a pie chart”.

A better description would be “A four quadrant pie chart of the results of a survey on favorite sports. 25% liked football, 10% liked surfing, 30% liked baseball, and 35% liked hiking”.

This description describes the results that the chart shows.

Like most accommodations for those who have disabilities, this accommodation not only helps people who are blind or visually impaired access the information on your website or presentation, it also helps the SEO on your website. So double bonus!

In a nut shell the difference is training. Service animals go through rigorous trainings and licensing which allow them to provide a specific service to their owners and also have the ability to go into multiple environments and work. By work I mean they are focused on their job. A seeing eye dogs job is to navigate their owner through their environment without incident. A service dog’s job could also be warning their owner that a seizure is coming on, or picking up dropped items, the list goes on and on.

In comparison an emotional support animal is typically not certified and licensed like a service animal. They are there primarily for comfort. Many emotional support animals have gone through little to no training and unfortunately people have taken advantage of this which has led to problems for those who have services animals.

Emotional support animals who have not been trained as service animals are more likely to act like pets than service animals are. Meaning they will bark, sniff around, socialize with others. Whereas service animals who are trained will ignore everyone except their owner and be very “serious” about what is going on around them.

An emotional support animal can be trained as a service animal and get certified and licensed. But there are far more instances of people saying their emotional support animal is a trained service dog when they are not.

“To determine if an animal is a service animal, you may ask two questions:

Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability?
What work or task has the dog been trained to perform?
You may not ask these questions if the need for the service animal is obvious. Examples include when a dog is guiding an individual who is blind or is pulling a person’s wheelchair. In addition:

You may not ask about the nature or extent of an individual’s disability
You may not require proof that the animal has been certified, trained or licensed as a service animal
You may not require the animal to wear an identifying vest or tag
You may not ask that the dog demonstrate its ability to perform the task or work
Under the ADA, it is training that distinguishes a service animal from other animals. Some service animals may be professionally trained; others may have been trained by their owners. However, the task that the service animal is trained to do must be directly related to the owner’s disability.

The handler is responsible for the care and supervision of his or her service animal. If a service animal behaves in an unacceptable way and the person with a disability does not control the animal, a business or other entity has the right to ask that the dog be removed. A business also has the right to deny access to a dog that disrupts their business or poses a direct threat to the health and safety of others. For example, if a service dog barks repeatedly or growls at customers, it could be asked to leave.

Service animals in-training are not specifically addressed in the ADA. However, some state laws may afford service animals in-training the same protections as service animals that have completed their training.”

(https://adata.org/faq/how-can-i-tell-if-animal-really-service-animal-and-not-just-pet)

If you look up the unemployment rate for those who have disabilities on government sites you will most likely see something like this… “The unemployment rate for people with a disability, at 7.3 percent in 2019, declined by 0.7 percentage point from the previous year” (https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2020/unemployment-rate-for-people-with-a-disability-declines-to-7-point-3-percent-in-2019.htm).

This may make you think that most people with disabilities have a job since in 2019 the unemployment rate for a typical person was 3.6% on average. But what you may not know is that the 7.3% unemployment mentioned above does not take 2 main factors into consideration.

1) Many people who are working age and have a disability have NEVER had a job so they are not counted in the national percentage because they have never claimed unemployment.

2) Many people who have disabilities who have had a job in the past DO NOT collect unemployment when they loose their job due to other benefits they receive for having a permanent disability, that are very difficult to re-obtain if lost, and that unemployment (which only typically lasts 6-12 months) would disqualify them from. On average a person with a disability has to apply to 60% more jobs than a typical job seeker, so it would take them more than the 6-12 months of unemployment to find a new job. (Disabled people have to apply for 60% more jobs than non-disabled people before finding one) These people are also not taken into consideration because they are not claiming unemployment.

So if you take these 2 main group into consideration, the actual UNemployment rate for working age people who have disabilities is actually closer to 70- 80%. The sad thing is that this percentage has not moved more than 1% for over 4 decades! (https://adata.org/)