What is a Reasonable Accommodation?
A reasonable accommodation is any administrative, environmental or procedural changes enabling persons with disabilities to fully participate in education, apply for a job, perform the essential duties of a job, enjoy the benefits and privileges of employment or fully access services and livelihood interventions.
Reasonable accommodation may be provided for persons with disabilities, whether the disability is an existing or an acquired condition, or of a temporary or permanent nature.
How to determine what requested accommodation is reasonable?
Consider the following;
- What is the nature and cost of the adjustment? Can it be met by the budget available?
- Will it enable the individual to perform his/her ability to participate in the programme?
- How many people could benefit from the adjustment?
- What additional benefits could result from the adjustment both for the partners and the participats with with disabilities?
Tips on Deciding Reasonable Accommodation
- Most accommodations cost little or no money at all. Just effort, consideration, support and creativity.
- It will not always be possible to provide an accommodation if it would cause an undue financial or administrative hardship. However, explore other options available keeping effective participation of the individual in mind. Most importantly, consult the individual in question and involve them in the decision process.
- Investing in a few costly reasonable accommodations such as (modification of a building for accessibility, purchasing assistive technology) could go a long way in supporting efforts on disability inclusion, allowing an organization to offer more opportunities to other participants with disabilities.
Common reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to:
For Physical Impairments
Common reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to:
- Making existing facilities accessible venues (meeting rooms, washrooms) where possible
- Shifting activities to accessible rooms
- Flexible learning arrangements for training programmes (finding options close to a participants home)
- Personal assistants (situations where these may be needed depend on the type of physical impairment, the severity and nature/ accessibility of the environment)
Note: Due to inaccessibility of public transportation in many rural areas, persons with physical impairments usually face difficulties using public means such as buses and mini vans to commute. A more convenient option for many is using motorcycles or private taxi’s that incur extra costs for transport. Providing extra transport facilitation to cover some of these additional costs can count as reasonable accommodation.
For Visual Impairments
Common reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to:
- Provision of Personal Assistants to help the individual to participate in activities
- Access braille or large printed material where needed.
- Acquisition of equipment when relevent (computers, phones, voice recorders) and/or assistive computer software such as JAWS (text-to-speech software)
For Hearing Impairments
Common reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to:
- Provision of Sign Language Interpreters
- Provision of subtitles for any audio-visual material
- Written information to back-up any audio communications.
Note: Hearing Impairments are diverse, ranging from hard-of-hearing to complete deafness. Some persons with hearing impairment are not conversant with sign language but may lip-read and speak quite coherently. This may be the case if the impairment occurred later in life after speech and language development. In this instance, written communication and provision of a personal assistant to help take notes during meetings/trainings would be a more efficient reasonable accommodation than a sign language interpreter.
For Psychosocial Impairments
Common reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to:
- The ability to apply for extensions on assignments
- A clear emotional support and referral pathway
- Access to a quiet space
- Frequent check-ins with a designated staff member
- Extra time to complete training programmes
Note: Psychosocial Impairments vary significantly from person to person, and are not always present. It is important to work with individuals with these challenges on an on-going basis to determine which supports they need at a given time.
