Trends in Accommodating Employees with Disabilities

​Much has changed in the world of work since the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990. Among those changes are the widespread ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a huge increase in remote work, and higher numbers of U.S. workers diagnosed with conditions like diabetes, obesity, autism, breast cancer and skin cancer.

All of that can impact compliance with the ADA, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, unless the employer can prove that doing so would cause it undue hardship. This National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which is observed every October, employers might strive to become more familiar with common conditions requiring accommodations, including long COVID-19, as well as typical accommodations workers may ask for or be provided.

Common Conditions

Recently, common conditions requiring workplace accommodations have included chronic back pain, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, migraines, heart disease, diabetes, carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, deafness and blindness.

Back pain "has always been the No. 1 condition," said David Fram, director of ADA services for the National Employment Law Institute in Golden, Colo. "But now I'm hearing [about] a lot of anxiety issues, and I do think it revolves around workplaces reopening."

Amy Epstein Gluck, an attorney with FisherBroyles in Washington, D.C., has also noticed a change in the types of conditions causing people to request accommodations. "I think we are seeing far more employees requesting reasonable accommodations for mental, emotional or psychiatric conditions than we have in the past," she said, "because mental health issues, year by year, carry less stigma, especially since the start of the pandemic, which wreaked havoc on employees' mental health." 

A mental health condition can be considered a disability if it substantially limits a person's ability to concentrate, interact with others, communicate, eat, sleep or conduct any other major life activity.

Long COVID-19

Going forward, employers should expect to see more accommodation requests related to long COVID-19. "In the future, I think we're going to see a lot of long COVID questions," Fram said. "I think it's going to go to No. 1."

Recent guidance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) explains that long COVID-19 can be considered a disability that may be accommodated under the ADA. The symptoms may include fatigue, difficulty concentrating, difficulty breathing and headaches. It might interfere with major life activities, such as breathing, gastrointestinal function or brain function, HHS noted.

People who are immunocompromised or who had a chronic illness before getting COVID-19 are more likely to experience long COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Typical Accommodations

Common workplace accommodations may include job duty changes, remote work, hybrid work or a modified work schedule, as well as reserved parking or a workspace closer to a bathroom. Adjustable chairs and ergonomic keyboards are common tools employers also can provide.

"The one [accommodation] I'm hearing about most often is work at home," Fram said.

Another growing trend is "accommodations needed for people who do hybrid work," he added. "That's an issue for employers because they're not necessarily factoring that into the cost when they implement hybrid work."

For example, a remote worker with a disability might need certain tools at home, such as an ergonomic chair, suitable lighting, or software allowing closed captioning, recording capability, text-to-speech translation and searchability. Employers should treat it like an accommodation request when someone asks to continue working at home, either on a hybrid basis or full time, Fram recommended.

At the worksite, an employee with back pain might need an ergonomic chair, wheelchair, ramp, nearby parking or equipment to assist with lifting. An employee with depression might need schedule flexibility, periodic rest breaks or a quiet office space.

Accommodations don't need to break the budget. Employers reported that 56 percent of their accommodations cost nothing to implement, while the rest of their accommodations had a typical cost of $500, according to a 2020 survey from the Job Accommodation Network, a service of the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy.

Seventy-five percent of employers said the accommodations they implemented were either very effective or extremely effective, according to the Job Accommodation Network. Employers reported direct benefits from providing workplace accommodations, including:

• Retaining a valued employee (90 percent).
• Increasing the employee's productivity (68 percent).
• Eliminating costs associated with training a new employee (58 percent).
• Increasing the employee's attendance (57 percent).
• Increasing the diversity of the company (36 percent).
• Saving workers' compensation or other insurance costs (30 percent).
  

Despite those advantages, there's still an unmet need for accommodations. Only about 60 percent of employees who could benefit from a workplace accommodation actually had one, according to a study published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management in 2019. Workers who were accommodated for a health problem in 2014 were 18.5 percent more likely to work in 2018 than those who were not accommodated in 2014.