October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a good opportunity to remind your employees of the abilities their co-workers with disabilities bring to the job. Give employees an overview of the leading law regarding people with disabilities so they understand the situation and can better integrate co-workers into the workplace—for safety’s sake.
The federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) makes it illegal for employers with 15 or more employees to discriminate against individuals with disabilities in any aspect of employment. Although the law doesn’t force companies like yours to hire individuals with disabilities, it does require you to give them a fair chance. And once individuals with disabilities are hired, the ADA requires employers to make reasonable accommodations on request, unless the accommodation would cause an undue hardship.
The ADA prohibits discrimination in all employment practices, conditions, and privileges of employment, including:
- Job application, recruitment, and hiring procedures
- Compensation, benefits, advancement, training, and other conditions and opportunities
- Layoffs, dismissals, and other ends to employment
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The ADA defines various terms. Go over them with your employees. For example:
- A qualified individual with a disability is a person who:
—Meets a job’s legitimate skill, experience, education, or other requirements
—Can perform a job’s essential (not marginal) functions with or without reasonable accommodations - A major life activity that must be substantially limited to qualify under one definition of “disability” includes:
—Walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, and breathing
—Performing manual tasks
—Concentrating, thinking, communicating
—Learning
—Caring for oneself
—Lifting
—Bending
—Sleeping, eating - Conditions that qualify as disabilities may include:
—Epilepsy
—Substantial hearing or visual impairment
—Paralysis
—HIV infection and AIDS
—Mental retardation
—Mental illness
—Specific learning disability
—Cerebral palsy
—Respiratory disorder
—Muscular dystrophy - A reasonable accommodation is a modification or adjustment to a job or work environment to enable a qualified person with a disability to perform essential job functions. Reasonable accommodations include:
—Restructuring a job
—Modifying work schedules
—Acquiring or modifying equipment
—Providing qualified readers or interpreters
—Making existing employee facilities usable by employees with disabilities
More and more people with disabilities are entering the workforce because of their abilities to do the job for which they are applying. Help all your employees work together productively and safely by ensuring awareness of any accommodations some employees may need.
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Why It Matters
- There are between 40 million and 50 million Americans with physical or mental disabilities.
- This means that 1 in 6 people in the country have a disability.
- Many of these people have valuable aptitudes, job skills, and experience. Yet they often face job discrimination because of their disabilities.
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