Tips on Handling Reasonable Accommodation Claims Effectively

HR professionals spend a significant amount of time managing Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodations. And yet, ADA charges represented nearly half of the lawsuits the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed last year.

The EEOC received 33,668 charges of disability discrimination in fiscal year 2024. “That is an increase from 29,160 charges in fiscal year 2023,” said James Reidy, an attorney with Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green PA in Manchester, N.H., during SHRM25 in San Diego.

Often, ADA litigation brought by the EEOC involves an employer’s refusal to provide an accommodation or engage in the ADA’s interactive process for identifying an accommodation, Reidy said.  

Recent EEOC allegations involve employers refusing to: 

• Provide a sign language interpreter for an interview.
• Provide a stool for a host whose ability to stand or walk was limited to 30 minutes at a time due to a knee condition.
• Accommodate a blind employee’s use of screen reader software. The EEOC alleged that the employer failed to seek technical assistance from the software publisher or the employee’s vocational counselor.
• Hire a deaf applicant who could not hear or speak, or accommodate the applicant by using a cellphone for communication.

Interactive Process

Such allegations can arise from employers’ failure to fully engage in the interactive process for identifying a reasonable accommodation. 

Reidy said the interactive process involves:

• The employee generally initiating the discussion. The employer can start it as well but should do so carefully to avoid a claim that it regarded the employee as having a disability.
• No magic words to begin the process.
• A verbal or written request for accommodation.
• The employer’s response.
• Requests for clarification, and, if the need for accommodation is not obvious, medical documentation.
• The employer asking about the duration of the need for accommodation (for example, a modified work schedule or leave).
• Documentation of the entire process.

Accommodations suggested by employees don’t have to be adopted; the employer can propose alternatives.

But sometimes managers fail to even recognize that an accommodation has been requested. “Train managers what not to say and to promptly ask, ‘How can I help?’ ” Reidy said.

How-To Guide: Handling ADA Accommodation Requests

Reasonable Accommodations

Reidy noted that an accommodation is reasonable when it does not pose an undue hardship, factoring in:

• Cost (although cost often is a losing argument for employers and accommodations often are inexpensive).
• Impact on the organization.
• Whether the employee poses a direct threat to themselves or others when the threat cannot be reduced or eliminated through accommodation.

In addition, the employee or applicant must be able to perform all essential job functions with or without accommodation.

Reidy provided the following examples of reasonable accommodation: 

• Job restructuring, such as assigning marginal functions to someone else.
• Leave.
• Modified or part-time schedule.
• Assistive equipment or devices.
• Interpreters.
• As a last-resort accommodation, reassigning the worker to a vacant position.

He said that examples of unreasonable accommodations include:

• Changing the employee’s supervisor.
• Rescinding discipline.
• Assigning the employee’s essential functions to someone else.

Common reasonable accommodation downfalls to avoid include: 

• Failing to recognize a reasonable accommodation has been requested.
• Failing to engage in the interactive process to identify a reasonable accommodation.
• Not considering leave as a possible reasonable accommodation.
• Not recognizing that someone with a mental disability needs to be accommodated.
• Failing to consider alternatives.
• Retaliating against an employee for requesting an accommodation.

ADA Guidance

Since the ADA’s enactment in 1990, the EEOC has issued more than 16 ADA guidance memos, Reidy said.  

These memos include the following topics:

• Pre-employment questions and medical exams.
• Disability-related inquiries and medical exams.
• Reasonable accommodation and undue hardship.
• Psychiatric disabilities (now more typically referred to as mental health disabilities).
• Other conditions, such as diabetes, epilepsy, and visual and hearing disabilities.

Remember that the accommodation process is an individualized determination, Reidy said. Not all back, sight, hearing, or mental conditions are the same, for example.

Toolkit: Accommodating Employees’ Disabilities

When the ADA was enacted 35 years ago, 1 in 30 people in the U.S. had disabilities covered by the law. Now, partly due to the expansion of the term “disability” in the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, 1 in 4 have disabilities, Reidy said.

It’s good that the ADA protects those who need its protection, he noted, but there is a downside: “It increases the chance of abuse by those who are not disabled.”