Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
Whether your’e an employee with a disability or an employer who employees an individual with a disability, it is important to know your workplace rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), and how to effectively request or accommodate a disability.
The ADA requires employers to provide effective, reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities. To help determine effective accommodations, the ADA requires that the employers use an “interactive process,” which simply means that employers and employees with disabilities who request accommodations work together with extensive rationale to produce accommodations.
When an accommodation is not obvious, an appropriate accommodation is best determined through a flexible, interactive process. As part of this process, the ADA requires:
direct communication between the employer and employee to explore in good faith the possible accommodations;
consideration of the employee’s request; and
offering an accommodation that is reasonable and effective.
Under the ADA, an employer is liable if the employer takes adverse action against an an employee who requested a reasonable accommodation, and the employer failed to meet such reasonable request. This places the burden on the employee to make known to the employer that reasonable accommodation is needed.
If you have any questions about the ADA requirements or the ADA in general, please don’t hesitate to contact our office where we always welcome your inquiries.