ADA & Your Rights

Becoming familiar with the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act (established in 1990) is important because it will allow you to know your rights as a person with a disability living in the US. The ADA is a group of laws that prohibit discrimination of disabled people in a variety of aspects of social life.

Job Interviews

For example, the ADA prohibits job interviewers from asking if you have a disability or to ask questions about the nature, type, or severity of the disability. This law also prohibits asking about prior personal disabilities, illness, or cases of disability or illness within the family.

However interviewers can ask questions related to your ability to do a job with or without reasonable accommodation. According to the law, reasonable accommodations is whatever adaptations or assistance you need in order to be able to do your job as others without disabilities.

Reasonable Accommodations

For example: if you are blind and work with a computer, the law says that you should have equipment that can help you read the screen without using your eyes. Or, if you use a wheelchair, then your work environment must be accessible for your chair, including your desk, the doors and the bathroom. Other examples of reasonable accommodations include interpreters for deaf people; readers for blind people, and providing flexible work schedules or job locations.

In other words, any question must be related to the job and your ability to do it. If your disability is visible, or if you tell the employer that you have a disability, the interviewer is allowed to ask how you can perform the job, with or without accommodation. It is perfectly legal for them to ask you to demonstrate your ability to do some of the tasks. It is important that if you need accommodations, and the interviewer is aware of your disability, you tell the interviewer. Private employers with more than 15 employees and all public employers must comply with these laws.

Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Another important law is the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, particularly section 501. This law protects those seeking federal employment from being discriminated against because of disability if they are otherwise qualified to do the job. It also allows for affirmative action.

Affirmative Action: What is it?

Affirmative action is any action or policy that gives advantages or special consideration in terms of employment and education to minorities (racial or ethnic groups, people with disabilities, women etc) who have been discriminated against in the past as a group. Those employers who have affirmative action policies make efforts to increase the diversity in their workplace, recruiting minorities to work for them and hiring a minority over a non-minority with the same qualifications.

For example, if an employer has two candidates, one man and one woman, or one disabled person, and one person without a disability, for one position he or she has to make a decision. Suppose that the two job applicants have equal skills, education, interview skills, and previous experience, affirmative action policies allow for them to hire the member of a minority group, the woman, or the person with a disability.

Affirmative action is not about filling a quota. An organization, agency, or office does not have to hire a specific number of minorities, but it is an attempt to increase diversity and representation in the work environment and hire those who may have been discriminated in the past. For this reason, some people call it "reverse discrimination".

With this law, employers are expected to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities so as not to limit their role within the work site.

JAN: Your Advocate for Accommodation and Equal Employment
The JAN (Job Accommodation Network) as part of the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy can provide assistance to those with questions about job accommodations as it relates to compliance with the ADA as well as disability employment policy/rights in general.

To utilize their assistance, go to http://www.jan.wvu.edu/english/homeus.htm. You may ask questions via fax (304-293-5407), e-mail (jan@jan.icdi.wvu.edu), or phone (1-800-526-7234 (V/TTY) in the United States, 1-800-ADA-WORK (V/TTY) in the United States, 1-304-293-7186 (V/TTY) Worldwide) or by mail (Job Accommodation Network, PO Box 6080, Morgantown, WV 26506-6080).

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