Accommodating Disability: Reasonable Employer Expectations
As a lawyer who works on both sides of the management/employee divide, I see both sides of disputes relating to disability accommodation issues. There's a lot of confusion and uncertainty about what information the employer is (or isn't) entitled to, and what the employee needs to do to in order to fully engage an employer's duty to accommodate. The Duty to Accommodate, Generally People are entitled to be free from discrimination in employment on the basis of disability (among other things). This engages an obligation upon employers to offer 'reasonable accommodation up to the point of undue hardship' to disabled employees who require such accommodation in order to be able to fulfill the needs of the job. While there's nothing wrong with an employer setting various requirements of a given position, if an employee says "I have a disability that prevents me from meeting this requirement", an employer needs a compelling justification for nonetheless ins...