Reasonable Employment Accommodations for Persons With Disabilities: A Policy-Capturing Approach.

Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified persons with disabilities who need them in order to work (EEOC, 1992). The ADA defines reasonable accommodation ambiguously. The current study used a policy capturing approach to examine the effects of characteristics of the person with a disability (i.e., type of disability, previous performance level, employment status), characteristics of the accommodation (i.e., cost, type of accommodation), and characteristics of the observer (i.e., occupational status, disability status, gender) on judgments of reasonable accommodation. Students and employed persons (n = 107) completed the policy capturing profiles. Results indicate that low cost accommodations were judged to be more reasonable than high cost accommodations, accommodations for high performers were judged to be more reasonable than accommodations for low performers, and accommodations for incumbents were judged to be more reasonable than accommodations for new hires. Type of disability, type of accommodation, and respondent group characteristics did not significantly influence perceptions of reasonable accommodation