Don’t drag your feet on accommodation requests

All day long you give me the runaround

When you say something here,

You mean something there

You give me the runaround

Same thing yesterday,

Same thing the day before

from “Runaround” by Tulsa songwriter J. J. Cale

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), an employer should grant accommodations to employees with a disability, so long as the accommodations are reasonable and don’t impose an undue hardship on the employer’s operations. To fulfill this obligation and consider an individual’s request for accommodation, the employer must gather information and discuss potential accommodations that may address the employee’s disability-related needs. The ADA refers to this as the “interactive process.” The law doesn’t spell out any time frame within which employers must satisfy the interactive requirement. But what happens when an employer is slow to consider and decide an accommodation request?

Military service and a career in education