The ADA is the most charge-generating civil rights statute the EEOC enforces. In fiscal year 2024, disability discrimination charges hit 36% of the agency's total filings, outpacing race, sex, and age. The reason isn't malice; it's complexity. The ADA requires employers to engage in an "interactive process" whenever an employee asks for an accommodation, and the process has specific steps, specific documentation requirements, and specific traps. Most ADA charges come from employers that skipped a step, documented poorly, or treated the accommodation request as a simple yes-or-no question.
What the ADA Requires of Employers Title I of the ADA applies to private employers with 15 or more employees, state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions. It prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, training, and other employment terms. It also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation to employees and applicants with known disabilities, unless doing so would cause undue hardship.
The law defines disability broadly: a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having such an impairment. The 2008 ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) widened that definition considerably, and courts now rarely dismiss cases on the disability-definition question.
The Interactive Process: What Employers Actually Have to Do When an employee requests an accommodation, the employer must engage in a good-faith, individualized interactive process to identify effective accommodations. The process has no fixed script, but it generally includes: asking what the employee needs and why, requesting medical documentation if the disability or need is not obvious, evaluating whether the requested accommodation is reasonable, considering alternatives, and implementing a chosen accommodation.
The common employer errors are: ignoring requests that aren't labeled "ADA accommodation," refusing accommodations without documenting why, failing to consider alternatives, and treating the process as a one-time negotiation rather than an ongoing conversation. Each of those errors has generated EEOC charges and lawsuits.
What Counts as Undue Hardship? Undue hardship means significant difficulty or expense considering factors like the size of the employer, its financial resources, and the nature of the accommodation. The bar is high. Courts rarely accept cost as undue hardship for large employers. Fundamental disruption of operations is the more defensible rationale.
Medical Inquiries and Confidentiality The ADA places strict limits on when employers can ask about disability or require medical exams. Pre-offer, employers cannot ask disability-related questions or require medical exams. Post-offer but pre-employment, medical exams are permitted if uniformly required of all entrants in the job category. During employment, medical inquiries are permitted only when job-related and consistent with business necessity.
Medical information obtained through the ADA process must be kept confidential and stored separately from general personnel files. The EEOC has pursued cases involving employers that shared medical information with supervisors, peers, or third parties without authorization.
Building an ADA-Compliant Employee Relations Program in 2026 Five practices distinguish employers that handle ADA well. They train managers to recognize accommodation requests in any form, because employees rarely use the specific words "I need a reasonable accommodation." They centralize the interactive process through HR or ER rather than leaving it to individual managers. They maintain separate, secure files for medical documentation. They document every step of the process, including offers, declines, and alternative proposals. And they include disability-based concerns in their grievance procedures.
The harassment and retaliation obligations attached to the ADA are equally important. Employees who request accommodations or report disability discrimination are protected from retaliation. AllVoices' HR case management platform gives employee relations teams the structured documentation that ADA cases require, with confidentiality controls that align with the law's record-keeping demands.
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