Chapter 14 - Accommodations in Communication

Summary

The video by Patti Douglass discusses the importance of implementing accommodations in the workplace, making environments inclusive for employees with disabilities or impairments. It underscores the fact that accommodations not only support those with identified disabilities but benefit everyone by addressing common temporary or minor impairments. Detailed discussions center on the legal backdrop provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act and its amendments, defining key terms and employer obligations. The transcript also highlights practical steps workplaces can take to accommodate various disabilities, emphasizing communication and understanding to maximize the potential and comfort of all employees, ultimately ensuring no talent is overlooked.

Highlights

• Discusses the importance of workplace accommodations for all employees. 🏢
• Explains the legal backdrop and definitions in the ADA. 📜
• Offers examples of accommodations for visual and hearing impairments. 👀👂
• Covers accommodations for specific needs like cancer and pregnancy. 🤰🩺
• Emphasizes the importance of maintaining confidentiality. 🔐
• Addresses the need for training and awareness about disabilities. 🎓

Key Takeaways

• Embrace inclusive workplaces to maximize talent and skills. 🌟
• Accommodations benefit everyone - not just those with disabilities. 🤝
• Legal obligations exist under the ADA for reasonable accommodations. 📚
• Communication is key in implementing effective accommodations. 📢
• Employers should focus on understanding and meeting employees' needs. 🔍

Overview

In this insightful video, Patti Douglass delves into the essentials of creating inclusive workplace environments by discussing accommodations for employees with disabilities or temporary impairments. She begins by emphasizing the broad spectrum of individuals who can benefit from such adjustments, asserting that a well-accommodated workplace can harness the full potential of its workforce without discrimination. Douglass highlights the role of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in setting the groundwork for these accommodations, thereby legalizing inclusivity.

Patti Douglass further elaborates on what constitutes 'reasonable accommodations' in a workplace setting, providing vivid examples like allowing service animals, offering flexible work schedules, and ensuring access through ramps or interpreters. The transcript transitions into a more engaging tone with anecdotes relating to cancer treatments and pregnancy, illustrating how these situations require thoughtful accommodations to maintain productivity and well-being.

The video concludes by stressing the significance of communication and the need to keep disability disclosures confidential to create a safe and supportive work environment. Douglass advocates for training programs to spread awareness amongst employees, fostering a culture of understanding and cooperation. This proactive approach not only respects the rights and needs of employees but also enhances organizational morale and efficacy, ensuring no valuable talent is overlooked due to a lack of accommodations.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Workplace Accommodations The chapter discusses the importance of workplace accommodations and why they are crucial. It highlights that a significant segment of the workforce may have disabilities, impairments, or discomforts, and accommodations can help ensure these individuals are not overlooked in hiring processes. Furthermore, the benefits of workplace accommodations extend beyond those with identified disabilities, ultimately supporting everyone within the workplace environment.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Americans with Disabilities Act The chapter discusses the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which was enacted in 1990. It emphasizes the ADA as an anti-discrimination law designed to assist individuals who have both permanent and temporary physical impairments. The act ensures that necessary accommodations are provided to help people with disabilities effectively.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Defining Disability and Reasonable Accommodations Defining Disability and Reasonable Accommodations: This chapter discusses the legal framework designed to prevent discrimination against individuals with disabilities in hiring and workplace settings. It notes a significant amendment made in 2008 to update the definitions affecting not only workplaces but also educational settings. However, the focus in this summary is on workplace accommodations. A disability is defined in this context as a physical or mental impairment that creates substantial barriers to participating in major life activities and necessitates reasonable accommodations for equal opportunity in the workplace.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Examples of Workplace Accommodations The ACT mandates that employers provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with impairments that significantly limit major life activities. Employers are legally required to ensure these accommodations are reasonable. The specific types of accommodations were not detailed in the provided text.
• 04:00 - 06:00: Employer Obligations and Limitations This chapter outlines the obligations and limitations of employers, focusing on accessibility and inclusivity in the workplace. It emphasizes the requirement for employers to accommodate service animals, even if the workplace typically does not allow animals. Additionally, it highlights the necessity to make facilities accessible through structural modifications like ramps and rails and underscores the importance of providing flexible work schedules to meet diverse needs.
• 06:00 - 08:00: Hearing Impairments Accommodations The chapter titled "Hearing Impairments Accommodations" highlights the importance of providing necessary accommodations for employees with hearing impairments. It discusses the potential need for interpreters, particularly for those who communicate via sign language. Additionally, it suggests investing in captioning software and assistive technology, such as screen readers, to facilitate communication and ensure an inclusive work environment for individuals with hearing disabilities.
• 08:00 - 10:00: Visual Impairments Accommodations The chapter titled 'Visual Impairments Accommodations' discusses the requirements for employers to accommodate employees with vision and hearing impairments. It emphasizes the importance of confidentiality when it comes to any disclosure of physical or mental disabilities. Employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations, such as providing readers for those with vision impairments and ensuring communication systems are accessible for individuals with hearing impairments. They must also respond promptly to accommodation requests to ensure inclusivity and support for all employees.
• 10:00 - 12:00: Accommodations for Cancer Patients The chapter discusses accommodations for cancer patients within a workplace setting. It covers scenarios where accommodations might be requested, such as new hires, employees disclosing a pre-existing disability, or new disabilities arising. Furthermore, it outlines the limitations of accommodations, for example, that employers are not obligated to remove essential job responsibilities to accommodate someone unable to perform those duties.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Accommodations for Pregnancy This chapter discusses the accommodations that employers are required to provide for employees during pregnancy. It specifies that employers are not obliged to supply personal use items such as walkers or hearing aids. Additionally, it emphasizes that employers do not need to excuse violations of conduct rules that are applied uniformly across the organization.
• 15:00 - 17:00: Back Pain and Remote Working The chapter discusses the responsibilities of employers in maintaining equitable workplace policies for disabled employees. It emphasizes that having a uniform policy that applies to all ensures fairness and accountability. The chapter also highlights that employers are not required to lower production standards when hiring or retaining a disabled employee. Instead, it is crucial to maintain consistent performance expectations. This chapter transitions into a specific discussion about accommodating hearing-impaired employees.
• 17:00 - 19:00: Disclosure and Implementation of Accommodations The chapter titled 'Disclosure and Implementation of Accommodations' discusses the necessity for providing sign language interpreters for individuals who need them. It emphasizes that accommodations can either be provided by teaching everyone sign language or by hiring interpreters. Additionally, the chapter highlights the importance of captioned media, especially during periods like mask mandates, which can hinder communication for individuals with hearing impairments.
• 19:00 - 21:00: Training and Awareness in Workplace The chapter discusses the importance of training and awareness in the workplace, particularly focusing on how to accommodate individuals who rely on lip reading. It suggests the use of clear masks to facilitate communication and highlights the necessity of providing visible alerting devices to complement audible ones such as beeping equipment or fire alarms. Additionally, it mentions the usefulness of notepads or whiteboards for aiding communication with the hearing impaired.
• 21:00 - 25:00: Communication Tools and Strategies The chapter "Communication Tools and Strategies" discusses aids for individuals with visual impairments. These aids include screen reader technology, which vocalizes text on the screen, making it accessible for those who can't see it. Additionally, the chapter covers the use of talking equipment, high visibility floor tape or paint, and adaptations on uneven or bumpy surfaces to assist visually impaired individuals.
• 25:00 - 27:00: Final Thoughts and Encouragement The chapter titled 'Final Thoughts and Encouragement' explores the accommodations made by companies for individuals with partial blindness and other specific health challenges, such as cancer. The author shares a personal experience of undergoing surgery and radiation therapy for cancer a decade ago, highlighting the impact of these treatments. The discussion underscores the importance of tailored accommodations in supporting diverse needs and concludes with motivational reflections for the reader.

Chapter 14 - Accommodations in Communication Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 why would we talk about accommodations in the workplace because there is a valuable segment of the workforce who have some sort of a disability or impairment or discomfort and we don't want to miss out on hiring those employees accommodations help not only people with identified disabilities but really everyone in the workplace because
• 00:30 - 01:00 there are a lot of people who might have even temporary discomforts or physical impairments that accommodations would help the Americans with Disabilities acts was passed in 1990 and it was really just an anti-discrimination bill that helps people
• 01:00 - 01:30 keep from being discriminated against in hiring and in the workplace and in 2008 there was an amendment to update the definitions and there's also a portion of it that helps with people in schools and other words students in in schools but we're going to talk about the workplace accommodations today so what is the dis definition of a disability well a person with a disability has a physical or mental
• 01:30 - 02:00 impairment which substantially substantially limits one or more of their major life activities or they have some sort of a record of an impairment or they're just regarded as having such an impairment the ACT calls for reasonable accommodations in the workplace in other words employers are legally obligated to provide reasonable accommodations what are reasonable accommodations well for one thing if you
• 02:00 - 02:30 are a workplace that has that does not allow animals in the workplace you do need to allow service animals and you need to make your current facilities accessible people need to be able to go up if there are steps you need to have ramps you need to have rails things like that and you need to modify their work schedule or give flexible work schedules
• 02:30 - 03:00 to your employees to accommodate any impairment that would be hard to navigate around if with a certain disability you might need to provide interpreters this would be if someone for instance uses sign language to communicate you would need to invest in some sort of a captioning software for those who are hearing impaired and you provide assistive technology like screen
• 03:00 - 03:30 readers for people with vision impairment or a phone system that connects directly to hearing age for those with hearing impairments so what are employers required to do they must keep any kind of disclosure of a physical or mental disability confidential they need to provide reasonable accommodations that we just went over and respond promptly to a
• 03:30 - 04:00 request for such accommodations this is in for people who are being hired for the first time in the company or for an employee who works there and has a new disability or decides to disclose a disability they've already had so what are employers not required to do well they do not have to eliminate a primary job responsibility to accommodate someone who could not perform that responsibility
• 04:00 - 04:30 they do not have to provide personal use items like say Walkers or hearing aid something like that they do not have to excuse a violation of a conduct rule that is uniformly applied to everyone in the organization in other words you can't just have a certain conduct policy that you decide to enforce because you don't want
• 04:30 - 05:00 to keep a disabled employee this has to be a policy that everyone is held accountable to and then you do not have to lower your production standards you don't have to say well I guess we have to hire this disabled person or keep this disabled person so now we have to lower the amount of output that we require of that position that is that is not a an obligation of an employer so let's talk to the specifically about hearing impaired
• 05:00 - 05:30 accommodations sign language is an interpreter sign language and interpreters are required either everyone learns sign language or you provide interpreters captioned media is very very helpful if you were masking this this was written during masking protocols but think about it people with hearing impairments suddenly did not have access
• 05:30 - 06:00 to lip reading so you would want to provide clear masks so that they could understand conversations alerting devices so if you have some sort of beeps for backup backing up equipment or fire alarms or any of that you need to have visible alerting devices to go along with those audible ones and then notepads or white boards are helpful to the hearing impaired
• 06:00 - 06:30 now what about visual impairments what can you do to help people well screen reader technology where they hear what is being read or what they would normally read on the screen is helpful because you can't make your screen Braille talking equipment if they're using some equipment you can have talking equipment and then high visibility floor tape or paint for bumpy surfaces and even surfaces that could be
• 06:30 - 07:00 hazards this is for people who are not completely blind of course but those who can see some and then some other accommodations that companies make are for specific problems like cancer so I have had cancer 10 years ago I had both surgery and radiation therapy both of those where you you out they just make
• 07:00 - 07:30 you tired and so looking back if well what I would do is I would go to radiation therapy at 8:30 in the morning rush into work just power rock out of there rush to work and I'd work all day and grow increasingly tired I found that at about five or six o'clock I would get my second wind and I would keep working because I was in a
• 07:30 - 08:00 job where I really worked a whole lot and so I just plowed through it but looking back it probably would have been healthier if I had somehow managed a nap during the day in the afternoon and then started working again or at five or six o'clock and that fatigue lasted for about six months after I finished
• 08:00 - 08:30 radiation therapy and that's just something that you would need to communicate with your employer if you were the one with cancer and then how much easier would it have been had I been able to take a nap and then wake up and then do remote work in the evening now to some extent I could work remotely in that job but this was preco and you know we just didn't have it down as much as we do now some people with cancer and pregnanc es by the way get nauseated by certain
• 08:30 - 09:00 scents that they wouldn't normally be nauseated by it could be flowers in the office it could be some sort of a scent like even someone's hand lotion can trigger nausea for pregnant women and people with cancer undergoing a treatment that causes nausea and then workstation space heaters because certain treatments can make you very cold and and just really asking the
• 09:00 - 09:30 person with cancer what they need for where they are in their treatment currently or their illness what about pregnancy pregnancy brings on fatigue in the first and third trimesters typically the second trimester actually sometimes and often creates a burst of energy but I remember pregnancy very well and
• 09:30 - 10:00 especially in the third trimester getting very very very tired during the day so maybe flexible schedules and or maybe just a completely different schedule and then this is sort of extreme but someone might need some sort of help getting up and down and there are patient lifts that can help with that and then ergonomic equipment things that make it easier to navigate and these would be for probably people
• 10:00 - 10:30 who get really big during the pregnancy but it certainly can happen and again just communicate with a pregnant person and say you know what can we do and this is not on the screen but or in the textbook but I have been part of an organization when one of my employees was pregnant and you do need to provide breastfeeding facilities or extra time and extra time for expressing
• 10:30 - 11:00 milk during the day and that's just another thing that's a reality of pregnancy and then childbirth then back pain if you've never had back pain that's great you probably will experience some back pain at some time in your life often it's temporary often it's permanent and chronic and it just makes life miserable
• 11:00 - 11:30 it makes it to where everything changes so working remotely can really help so that you can lie down in certain you know positions that work for you sit in a certain chair that works for you certainly periodic rest breaks or maybe maybe instead of a 15minute break someone wants to split that in half and take two different breaks to ease the pain of just sitting or standing all the time and then you
• 11:30 - 12:00 can have some sort of carts or lightweight ladders for people who have to move things around anti fatigue mats is very helpful and if people are just standing on hard surfaces all day that can be very hard on the back even when you don't have back problems so those anti fatigue mats are really a a Salvation for those people and then adjustable workstations so that they can
• 12:00 - 12:30 sit or stand according to how their back feels I knew someone who had severe back pain and having a standing desk really worked for him for me standing M for very long makes my lower back hurt so having a flexible desk or you know some sort of ergonomic workstations can really really help so how do you go about making sure people have their accommodations well
• 12:30 - 13:00 the applicant or the current employee must disclose their disability if they want accommodations and explain how it would impact their ability to do the job and then you really need to probe you need to ask questions but you better understand what it is they need and you can ask for documentation of the disability and you you really just are in a
• 13:00 - 13:30 learning situation at this point trying to find out more so you can best serve them and then you absolutely need to remember to keep it confidential and you know you might have to inform HR if you are the say supervisor or HR may have to inform the supervisor but it doesn't need to go around around the office and
• 13:30 - 14:00 then you implement the plan and you see how it works and both parties need to weigh in on how well it's working in that workplace and for that employee and finally everyone in the office needs to be trained on disabilities in the workplace so that no one has prejudice against someone with disabilities but you certainly don't call out the person with the disability you make it generic but you can
• 14:00 - 14:30 certainly explain a specific accommodation and how it works and how the other employees can work around it all of that takes a lot of communication I don't know if you noticed that but all of those steps had a lot to do with communicating so what are some communication tools for people with disabilities one thing you can do to help is use a lot of photos and Hands-On examples because that really accommodates a lot of people's learning
• 14:30 - 15:00 style maybe yours some people just can't read instructions and get right to it checklists can be very helpful to many many people and that's not necessarily an impairment it's a learning style and it might be good in certain workplaces to keep background noises to a minimum because some people cannot work with distraction now some people might say well I can't
• 15:00 - 15:30 work in quiet but they can always have if it's safe you know have some sort of earbuds and music or whatever they need to help them be productive Believe It or Not There are studies that say classical music helps you be productive give it a try sometime if you're feeling stuck not focused and then providing agendas of meetings is always a good practice frankly but for those who have a hard
• 15:30 - 16:00 time focusing an agenda can really help them follow along and understand where you are in the conversation and then ensure that um all materials have accessible formats show videos with captions try to provide some sort of screen reading device and anything you can do oh and I skipped over letting employees
• 16:00 - 16:30 use headphones sometimes that helps them focus and then always this is a good practice no matter what circulate notes and minutes from a meeting you never know who couldn't catch everything because of a learning disability but then again you don't know who was zoning out or checking their social media during a meeting so I like to do what's called a conference report after meetings I do it narratively but it's good to have bullet points make it easy
• 16:30 - 17:00 to read but you can do it in the form of a spreadsheet as well which is probably more effective but you go over what happened in that meeting and who is responsible for the next step and the deadline for that very useful document so those are some things just be very aware of your people your people in an office be sensitive to their needs because bottom line you don't want to miss out on the
• 17:00 - 17:30 talent of those who have some sort of an impairment that with some accommodations could be dealt with just firing and then you get the person's Talent skills and experience and that is very valuable to any organization and its employees