30 Years of Accommodations

By Terri L. Rhodes, CCMP, CLMS, CPDM, MBA

CEO
DMEC

It is hard to believe the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been around for 30 years. While we’ve fine-tuned our practices and processes and have a better grasp on making accommodations, employers still struggle. There are still challenges to the law and new court cases that clarify interpretation, and sometimes large fines accompany those cases.

Since the inception of the ADA, much has changed in the way accommodations are managed. Thirty years ago — and yes, to date my career, I was doing this 30 years ago — I was relatively new to this field, and we were all learning. We didn’t have guidance or a playbook for managing an accommodation request. It was harder for an employee to be granted an accommodation because the definition of disability was stringent. Accommodations were handled by the employer solely in a decentralized manner. Some supervisors were assigned the task as part of their supervisory role; however, Human resources or employee relations handled most requests. There wasn’t a centralized process for tracking and monitoring accommodations.

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