A change to a job, workplace or housing rule that lets a person with a disability participate equally - required unless it imposes undue hardship.
A reasonable accommodation is an adjustment to the usual way things are done so that a person with a disability can do a job, or use and enjoy a home, on equal terms. In employment that can mean modified equipment, an adjusted schedule, leave, or reassignment to a vacant position; in housing it can mean a change to a rule, such as permitting an assistance animal where a no-pets policy otherwise applies.
The obligation is not unlimited. An employer need not provide an accommodation that would impose undue hardship - significant difficulty or expense judged against the employer's actual resources - and need not eliminate an essential function of the job, lower a performance standard, or grant the specific accommodation requested if an effective alternative exists.
Process matters more than most people expect. The law contemplates an interactive dialogue between the parties to identify what would work, and a request does not have to use any magic words to trigger it. Employers who never engage with a request, and employees who never make the limitation known, are the two most common ways this goes wrong.
Advice is worth getting when a request has been refused without discussion, when medical information is being demanded beyond what the situation calls for, or when a request is followed by discipline or termination. Deadlines here are unusually short and unforgiving: administrative charges under the federal employment statutes must generally be filed with an agency before a lawsuit, and those windows are measured in months.
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