Please Help Me Understand My Rights Under the Americans With Disabilities Act

DISCLAIMER: I am not seeking legal advice.

The web site was less than helpful. Mostly all they offered are links to government pamphlets. I’m not particularly interested in wading through page after page of pdf’s.

I know that, in the main, the ADA compels employers to provide “reasonable acommodation” to persons with disabilities. The thing is, those words (reasonable, acommodation, and disabilities) are open to interpretation, and my employer’s interpretation will differ from mine, which will differ from my lawyer’s, which will differ from the judge’s.

What’s the general idea? If, for example, an employee has a job requiring manual dexterity and/or heavy lifting and develops arthritis as he ages, could the ADA compel his employer to offer him a desk job?

Or is the whole thing more about wheelchair ramps, handicap stalls, and similar acommodations?

It depends.

If the company claims the accommodation is unreasonable, and you challenge them on it, they might have to bring in everything from earning statements, to workflows and shifts/schedules and everything else the judge wants.

Changing jobs might be an unreasonable accommodation (and it probably is).

In your example, it’s probably going to turn out to be an unreasonable accommodation, but it still depends on a crap load – and I mean a crapload – of information should one challenge the employer on it.

Generally, the accommodation is about the actual job. You are hired to file 50 packs of material an hour, and with a disability can only do about 30. But if the very large Fortune 500 company can add some lifting assistance and a ramp or two for about 2500 bucks, and then you could meet the requirements of your job… this becomes the sort of thing that is probably reasonable. This is the meat of the issue really.

The scenarios are endless and often take bizarre turns when all details are sorted out (when companies claim it is unreasonable). Switching jobs within the company is not reasonable, unless you are best qualified and the job is open, in which case it’s not an accommodation under ADA, just a change. Everyone is encouraged to avoid ADA claims. Companies will spend a lot of money to accommodate, because the legal fees/risks will almost certainly be more. But switching jobs to a completely different one is probably flying in the face of basic employment law (if you are only getting it as an accommodation).


Up at work, they’ve remodeled a few bathrooms for wheelchair access. Installed electric door openers, ramps.

We have a two-story building with no elevator. Spending 50 grand to install one is considered unreasonable. Instead, if a disabled student registers for a class that meets in that building, they move the class to another classroom for the semester. That way the disabled student can take the class.

Well, I started out being moved to a desk closer to the bathroom, and being issued an all in one fax/scan/copy printer so I wouldn’t always be walking around. When it got seriously horrible, they changed me to a position I could telecommute from. The building my office was in was not wheelchair accessible, it was doable on crutches. I perhaps could have forced them to put auto opening front doors on the building, and perhaps auto opening door to the ground floor office I was in, but I secretly preferred telecommuting. Really, they did know I could have made them spend that kind of money on the building, the building really should have added the self opening doors to be properly compliant.

[there is pretty much no way a person in a chair can open a heavy swinging door and manuver through it without help.]

Philster gave a good answer. Basically, the company needs to make reasonable accommodations to allow you to do your job (not someone else’s).

Where I work, for example, we have store employees who work in a retail environment and their job includes unloading trucks and stocking shelves. The job description requires them to be able to lift up to 40 lbs. If someone has a disability, they have to propose a reasonable accommodation that will allow them to lift 40 lbs. Working at the cash register is not a reasonable accommodation, becuase unloading/stocking is an essential part of their job. Wearing a truss, on the other hand, would be reasonable if it allows them to lift without risking injury.

I think we are off topic just a bit (before Skammer helped out). When discussing reasonable accommodations, it’s not about retrofitting to allow handicap access in general.

What we are talking about is addressing an individual’s need, when he or she has identified themselves as disabled under the ADA and requires accommodations to perform essential job duties. When the accommodation is provided, the disabled person must perform their job duties in accordance with job requirements.

So, if someone claims they are disabled (and that has a range of 'what is disabled anyway?) and they are disabled or labeled such by the employer… you get into something like this:

Employee Sally claims she is disabled under the ADA. Employer recognized this disability. Sally cannot hold her head in a vertical position (affects major life activity = disabled) and requires a 5k dollar chair and custom neck/head support when working at a PC. It’s a 7500 financial burden to employer. Associate needs one extra break per day in additional to regular breaks/meals to treat her neck with a cream that smells foul, so she also requests a private area to do this.

This is how some of the ‘reasonable accommodation’ requests take shape. This is not very far off from a real experience we’ve dealt with, and we’ve met. The associate must perform the job duties with the accommodations. For a large company, it’s not unreasonable. For a small one: Might be.


Here’s another real-life example: a cashier has a disability that prevents her from standing for long periods of time on hard surfaces (like the floor of our store). Letting her sit down while ringing up our customers is probably not a reasonable accommodation, since she has to maintain mobility and maintain line of sight to the aisles. But a coushioned rubber standing mat provided at the company’s expense is probably going to be reasonable.

Although a company may not be required to give you a different job, they may be required to assign you different tasks within your job based upon your disability. For example, a truck driver must drive a truck. If he becomes disabled and is not longer able to drive , the company will not be required to give him a desk job. My job has clerical workers who perform a variety of tasks including answering phones,typing and filing.Although each task must be performed, it is not essential that each worker perform every task, so that for example, a deaf person could be assigned only typing and filing tasks. This sort of accomodation may be requierd