b'Americans with Disabilities ActWho, What, Why . . . Who does it apply to: The law applies to all employers with 15work together to come up with solutions to accommodate the or more employees. disability without undue hardship to the business. The goal is to help the employee to be able to perform the essential functions What is the issue: It is against the law to discriminate againstof the employees job so that the profitable relationship between an employee or a prospective employee based on a disabilityemployeeandemployermaycontinue.Theprocessmay the person has or that you view them as having (even if theyinvolve consulting with a disability specialist and physicians to dont). The prohibition extends not just to hiring and firing butdetermine what can be done at what cost. And, be careful, too to any discrimination in any significant term and condition ofquickly deciding the accommodation creates an undue hardship employment. on your business. The governments view of an undue hardship is likely to be far higher than your own.Whatismore,employersarerequiredtoreasonably accommodateanyemployeeorprospectiveemployeetoWhat are these essential functions:In any job there are critical assist that person in completing his/her job duties so long asor essential functions the employee was hired to perform and the accommodation does not create an undue hardship on theless critical functions the employee performs, which the employer business.Reasonableaccommodationsrangefromspecialcould assign to another employee, if necessary. An employer keyboardsforemployeeswithcarpaltunneltospecializedcan terminate a disabled employee or refuse to hire a disabled monitors for employees with vision issues and everything inapplicant if that person cannot perform the essential functions between. What may be a reasonable accommodation is limitedofthejobevenwithaccommodation.Anemployercannot only by the imagination of the parties, what technology andadversely affect a disabled person who cannot perform a non-devices are available, and the cost or hardship to the employeressential function that can be assigned to another employee. of implementing the accommodation. For example, a person with a bad back who occasionally lifts a box of paper for the copier cannot be fired if the company can What is a disability.under the law: Everyone has a personalget another employee to do it.view of what disabled means, but personal views do not count in the eyes of the government. The law defines disability as aWhat if I need a prospective employee to take a physical: physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one orAprospective employees capacity to handle the work sometimes more major life activities which may be permanent or temporary.is not obvious from looking at them. A person may look okay on Employers must be careful, however. Treating or regardingthe outside to be a lifeguard, but you need to know how well someone as though they have a disability is just as thoughthey swim and whether they can carry an injured person back to the person actually has whatever malady the employer treatsshore. To protect against disability discrimination, employers are them as having. And, after changes in the law in 2009, almostrequired to consider all other hiring factors before administering anything can be a disability, so employers should err on the sidethe physical and make an offer of employment conditioned only of viewing any malady as a temporary or permanent disability. on the result of the physical examination.Howdoesreasonableaccommodationwork:TheprocessWhatconstituteddiscrimination:Therearetwobasictypes ofaccommodatinganemployeeshouldbeaninteractiveof violation: direct mistreatment and disparate impact. Direct process. The employer and the employee are each required to 41'