Articles

Reasonable Accommodation Under the ADA

August, 2015

Employer’s Duty to Accommodate Under the ADA

Most employers are generally aware that both under the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, (“ADA”), and Connecticut’s disability law, they must engage in discussion with the employee, i.e., the “interactive process,” to ascertain what reasonable accommodations are necessary for the disabled employee to perform the essential functions of a position. What is not always clear is how far an employer is required to go in satisfying this legal obligation. A recent Second Circuit case clarified that an employer must only offer a reasonable accommodation that does not unduly burden business operations and need not continue to provide more generous accommodations or investigate alternative accommodations that an employee has not proposed.

In the case of Noll v. IBM, 787 F.3d 89 (2d Cir. 2015), a deaf software engineer who worked for IBM for many years had received several accommodations that enabled him to successfully perform his job. Although IBM provided the employee with on-site and remote interpreters and real-time transcription and video relay services, he alleged the company’s refusal to provide captions for all intranet videos and transcripts for all audio files immediately upon posting them violated the ADA.

However, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. It held that an employer need only provide an “effective accommodation,” not “a perfect accommodation or the very accommodation most strongly preferred by the employee.” Also, the court held that “the ADA imposes no liability for an employer’s failure to explore alternative accommodations when the accommodations already provided to the employee were plainly reasonable.” As the court explained, “ the interactive process is not required when the end it is designed to serve –reasonable accommodation— has already been achieved.”