Most people with any kind of disability are aware, at least vaguely, of their right to “reasonable accommodation” by employers. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to provide their employees with the accommodations they require to do their job as long as they don’t cause “undue hardship” for the employer or other employees.
This can be anything from a desk that allows them to sit in their wheelchair while they work to a computer or app that provides closed captioning during videoconferences. These typically wouldn’t cause undue hardship for an employer. Installing an elevator to allow an employee to access an upper floor (assuming the building doesn’t require one to be ADA compliant) likely would be too costly to be considered “reasonable.”
Even when employers and employees know about reasonable accommodations, they’re often less knowledgeable about what questions an employer has the right to ask an applicant or employee regarding their disability (physical or mental) and what information they can share with others in the workplace.
Too many employers believe that once an applicant or employee has opened the door to acknowledging their disability by requesting an accommodation, they have a right to ask them more about it. That’s not the case.
What employers do – and don’t – have the right to know
Just as employers can only broach the topic of a person’s disability in relation to whether they can do a particular job, the same applies to questions about their need for accommodation. If a hearing-impaired applicant asks for a special phone, the employer doesn’t have the right to ask them when they started losing their hearing, if they’ve always had a hearing impairment and myriad other questions.
Certainly, many people are comfortable sharing more information around their disability, but they don’t have to if it doesn’t relate to their requested accommodation. An employer also has no right to share that information with others in the organization. They can only share what they need to with the appropriate people to make sure the employee gets the necessary accommodation.
An employee’s privacy rights extend to any requested information from a doctor. Employers can require a doctor’s verification that a person needs a requested accommodation, but that’s all a doctor has to or should divulge without the employee’s permission.
Anyone who is denied reasonable accommodations or believes they’ve faced workplace discrimination that has resulted in negative consequences can better determine their options by getting the appropriate legal guidance.
