Department of Labor Issues New Disability Accommodation Tool
The Department of Labor recently issued a new online tool for employers and employers to use in connection with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations for disabled applicants and employees when requested, unless doing so would cause an undue hardship. As part of the process of identifying reasonable accommodations, employers are obligated to participate in an interactive discussion with disabled employees and applicants who are seeking workplace accommodations in order to perform their jobs. The new online tool, named “Situations & Solutions Finder” provides ideas for possible job accommodations. Users can search by keyword, disability type, limitation and occupation. The online tool also offers the ability to filter and save results. The search results will provide examples of possible workplace accommodations for employers and employees to consider. Currently, the tool has a database of over 700 examples. Even with this large number of examples, the tool will not show all possible accommodations, since many situations are unique. Employers are not required to use the accommodations suggested by the tool, as the results are provided for discussion purposes only, but will simply provide some examples of accommodations that employers or employees may not have previously considered.