• Employers have many accommodation ideas from which to choose.

Accommodation ideas are limited only by the imagination. Some accommodation ideas include:

• Providing/Modifying equipment
• Providing accessible materials
• Making changes to the physical workplace
• Restructuring jobs
• Modifying work schedules
• Providing breaks
• Allowing remote work
• Modifying supervisory methods
• Allowing service or emotional support animals
• Reassigning the employee
• Providing transportation
• Modifying tests, exams, or training
• Providing qualified readers
• Providing interpreters
• Providing leave Reassignment to a different position is a last resort accommodation.

An employee’s limitation will generally dictate the accommodation. For example, an employee with long COVID might have shortness of breath with exertion. Accommodations might, therefore, include the following:

• Reduce physical exertion;
• Allow rest breaks;
• Reduce workplace triggers, if any;
• Allow time for medical treatment such as use of a nebulizer or inhaler;
• Restructure the job to remove marginal job functions; or
• Develop an action plan to deal with sudden exacerbations.

An employee who suffers from fatigue might benefit from the following accommodations:

• Allow rest breaks,
• Provide an ergonomic workstation,
• Allow a flexible schedule, or
• Restructure the job to remove marginal job functions.

Employees who deal with brain fog (for example caused by long COVID), might need the following accommodations:

• Provide a quiet work space;
• Allow use of noise cancellation or white noise;
• Provide uninterrupted work time;
• Provide memory aids such as flowcharts and check lists;
• Allow the use of apps for concentration, memory, and organization;
• Allow rest breaks; or
• Restructure the job to remove marginal functions to allow focus on essential job duties.

The following accommodations might be effective for employees with headaches:

• Reduce workplace triggers, if any;
• Provide alternative lighting;
• Reduce glare; or
• Allow flexible scheduling.

A particular conditions does not mean that a limited list of effective accommodations is available. Much will depend upon the employee’s particular limitations in relation to the job’s essential functions. Identify the barriers between them and find ways to break the barriers down or eliminate them.

Employees with mobility limitations might need to have the workplace be made more accessible. Someone with a hearing impairment might need a translator. Each situations must be dealt with on its own merits. That’s why the interactive process is so important; it deals with the specific facts involved.

Providing/Modifying equipment

Purchasing equipment or modifying existing equipment is a form of reasonable accommodation. All employees need the right tools and work environment to effectively perform their jobs. Similarly, individuals with disabilities may need workplace adjustments to maximize the value they can add to the organization.

Many devices are available that make it possible for people to perform essential job functions. These devices range from very simple solutions, such as an elastic band that can enable a person with cerebral palsy to hold a pencil and write, to “high-tech” electronic equipment that can be operated with eye or head movements by people who cannot use their hands.

Employers are obligated to provide only equipment that is needed to perform a job; there is no obligation to provide equipment that the individual uses regularly in daily life, such as glasses, a hearing aid, or a wheelchair. However, employers may be obligated to provide items of this nature if special adaptations are required to perform a job.

Providing accessible materials

Employers may have to make written materials accessible to an individual with a disability who may not be able to read or understand them. Simple accommodations could include having someone read a list of employee conduct rules to an employee with a visual impairment or providing a simpler explanation of the rules for an employee with a cognitive disability.

Making changes to the workplace

Making changes to the facilities or work areas is a form of reasonable accommodation. This includes the physical barriers covered by the ADA accessibility standards. Employers need to make existing facilities used by employees readily accessible for employees with disabilities, such as making work areas accessible for approach, entry, and exit so people using wheelchairs can enter and back out of the area. This includes working areas as well as non-working areas such as break rooms, lunchrooms, training rooms, and restrooms.

Restructuring the job

Job restructuring includes shifting responsibility to other employees for minor tasks (or “marginal functions”) that an employee is unable to perform because of a disability and altering when and/or how a task is performed. It may involve reallocating or redistributing the marginal functions of a job. However, employers are not required to reallocate essential functions of a job as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. Essential functions, by definition, are those that a qualified individual must perform, with or without an accommodation. If the workforce is small and all workers must be able to perform a number of different tasks, job restructuring may not be possible.

Even though the ADA does not require employers to reallocate essential functions as a reasonable accommodation, they may do so if they wish. An individual may be reassigned to a lower-graded position if there are no accommodations that would enable the employee to remain in the current position and there are no vacant equivalent positions for which the individual is qualified (with or without a reasonable accommodation).

Employers are not, however, required to maintain the reassigned individual with a disability at the salary of a higher-rated position if employers do not do so for reassigned employees who do not have a disability. It should further be noted that employers are not required to promote an individual with a disability as an accommodation.

Modifying work schedules

Modifying work schedules may involve adjusting arrival or departure time, providing periodic breaks, or altering when certain job tasks are performed. Employers should consider modification of a regular work schedule as a reasonable accommodation unless this would cause an undue hardship. Modified work schedules may include flexibility in work hours or the workweek, or part-time work, where this will not be an undue hardship.

A modified schedule may also involve allowing an employee to use accrued paid leave or providing additional unpaid leave. Employers must provide a modified or part-time schedule when required as a reasonable accommodation, absent undue hardship, even if they do not provide such schedules for other employees.

Providing breaks

Providing an employee with breaks can be seen as a reasonable accommodation involving a modified work schedule. Sometimes, however, breaks can be short and rather infrequent, not really reaching the level of a schedule change.

Working from home (Telework)

Many employers have discovered the benefits of allowing employees to work from home through telework (also known as telecommuting) programs, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not all persons with disabilities need — or want — to work from home, and not all jobs can be performed at home. However, allowing an employee to work at home may be a reasonable accommodation where the person’s disability prevents successfully performing the job on-site and the job, or parts of the job, can be performed at home without causing significant difficulty or expense. To deny a request to work from home, employers must be able to show that attendance is an essential function for the particular job in question.

If an employee is working from home for a certain period, perhaps during a pandemic, you may ask employees if they will need reasonable accommodations in the future when they return to the workplace. Employers may ask employees with disabilities to request accommodations that they believe they may need when they return to the physical workplace, basically by beginning the interactive process.

Before allowing anyone to return to work (or even after they do return), employers may make information available to all employees about who to contact — if they wish — to request accommodation for a disability that they may need upon return to the workplace, even if no date has been announced for their return. If requests are received in advance, you may begin the interactive process.

Modifying supervisory methods

Simple modifications of supervisory methods may include communicating assignments in writing rather than orally for someone whose disability limits concentration or providing additional day-to-day guidance or feedback. Employers are not required, however, to change someone’s supervisor.

Making policy modifications

Modifying a workplace rule because of an employee’s disability may be a form of reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodation requires only that you modify the policy for an employee who requires such action because of a disability; however, you may continue to apply the policy to all other employees.

Granting time off or adjusting a work schedule may involve modifying leave or attendance procedures or policies. Similarly, you may need to modify a policy prohibiting animals in the workplace so that a visually impaired person can use a guide dog.

Allowing service animals or emotional support animals

Another type of accommodation is to allow employees to bring service animals or emotional support animals to work with them. Many individuals with disabilities use animals to help them perform some functions. Most people are familiar with seeing-eye dogs, for example.

A service animal and an emotional support animal are defined differently and apply in different situations. A service animal is specifically defined by the public accessibility provisions of the ADA, but not in the employment provisions.

An emotional support animal, on the other hand, is a companion animal that provides therapeutic benefit to an individual with a disability. Since the employment provisions of the ADA do not define a service animal or restrict accommodations to service animals as defined for public accessibility, employers may have to consider allowing an employee to bring an animal that does not meet the definition of a service animal into the workplace. This could include a therapy or emotional support animal. However, employers don’t have to allow an employee to bring any animal into the workplace if it is not needed because of a disability or if it disrupts the workplace or otherwise poses an undue hardship.

Even if employers have a no-pet policy, allowing a service or emotional can be a reasonable accommodation, because making exceptions to workplace policies can be an accommodation.

Service animals assist persons with a variety of disabilities in their day-to-day activities. Some examples include the following:

• Alerting persons with hearing impairments to sounds.
• Pulling wheelchairs or carrying and picking up things for persons with mobility impairments.
• Assisting persons with mobility impairments with balance.

Service animals are not pets — they perform some of the functions that people with disabilities cannot do for themselves.

Some service animals, but not all, wear special collars, harnesses, or other identification signaling that it is a service animal and not a pet. Some, but not all, are licensed or certified and have identification papers.

No registry of service animals exists, so you can’t simply look up whether a particular service animal is registered.

Reassigning the employee

Reassignment is generally the reasonable accommodation of last resort. Reassignment may be necessary where an employee can no longer perform his or her job because of a disability. The employee must be qualified for the new position, however. This means that the employee

• Satisfies the skill, experience, education, and other job-related requirements of the position, and
• Can perform the primary job tasks of the new position, with or without reasonable accommodation.

The employee does not need to be the best qualified individual for the position.

Providing transportation

Other forms of accommodation may involve making transportation provided by the employer accessible. Employers must consider accommodations related to commuting problems. It does not matter if the employee is fully able to perform his job without the need for accommodations once he or she gets to work.

Generally, it is not always an employer’s responsibility to provide an employee with transportation to and from work. However, an employee’s disability may interfere with his or her ability to get to work.

Modifying tests, exams, or training

Employers may be required to modify, adjust, or make other reasonable accommodations in the ways that tests and training are administered in order to provide equal employment opportunities for qualified individuals with disabilities.

Accommodations may be needed to assure that tests or examinations measure the actual ability of an individual to perform job functions, rather than reflecting limitations caused by the disability. The ADA requires that tests be given to people who have sensory, speaking, or manual impairments in a format that does not require the use of the impaired skill, unless that is the job-related skill the test is designed to measure.

Employers have an obligation to inform job applicants in advance that a test will be given, so that an individual who needs an accommodation can make such a request.

Providing qualified readers

When an applicant or employee has a visual disability, employers and the individual should use the interactive process to identify specific limitations of the individual in relation to specific needs of the job and to assess possible accommodations. It may be a reasonable accommodation to provide a reader for an individual with a disability, if this would not impose an undue hardship.

In some job situations, a reader may be the most effective and efficient accommodation, but in other situations alternative accommodations may enable an individual with a visual disability to perform job tasks just as effectively.

Where reading is an essential job function, depending on the nature of a visual impairment and the nature of job tasks, print magnification equipment or a talking computer may be more effective and less costly than providing another employee as a reader. Where an individual has to read lengthy documents, a reader who transcribes documents onto tapes may be a more effective accommodation.

Providing interpreters

Providing an interpreter on an “as-needed” basis may be a reasonable accommodation for a person who is deaf in some employment situations, if this does not impose an undue hardship.

A person who with a hearing impairment should be able to communicate effectively with others as required by the duties of the job. Identifying the needs of the individual in relation to specific job tasks will determine if or when an interpreter may be needed. The resources available to employers would be considered in determining whether it would be an undue hardship to provide such an accommodation.

People with hearing impairments have different communication needs and use different modes of communication. Some use signing in American Sign Language (ASL), but others use sign language that has different manual codes. Some people rely on an oral interpreter who silently mouths words spoken by others to make them easier to lip-read. Many hearing-impaired people use their voices to communicate, and some combine talking and signing. The individual should be consulted to determine the most effective means of communication.