Tuesday, February 4, 2020

This week in Reasonable Accommodations Requests

The ADA has been law of the land for almost 30 years and RantWoman still has fabulous experiences both figuring out what reasonable accommodations one can expect in the normal course of things and one specific individual reasonable accommodations requests to make and educating others about the entire topic.

RantWoman is also a total believer in understanding ADA compliance practices by default because sometimes when the ADA may not actually apply, knowing how to do needed accommodations people are used to can save everyone lots of pain grief irritation, exasperation... you get the idea.

PS In WA there is also RCW 49.60 which RantWoman believes sometimes gets people places the ADA by itself does not go. RantWoman is busy reading up on this.

This week's snapshot of moments on RantWoman's Not a lawyer mind.

Document Review

Ring. Ring. Ding in email: RantWoman will you help us review this document?

RantWoman "..reasonable accommodation...by email in accessible format..."

Okay. We can ask IT."

Clap. clap. The person RantWoman asked recognized the vocabulary. Asking IT for this situation sounds like fine good faith effort.

Next meeting
"...asked IT and they could not..." but it turns out RantWoman realized she needed to deal with a conflict of interest issue so no, RantWoman does not even need to think about reading the item the accessible format but does have a nice paper copy she can scan and jump through a bunch of extra technological hoops to read if she has to. Never mind that the accessible format issue is moot anyway.

Volunteer participation in a Transportation and Data project

Reasonable accommodations request: documents emailed in advance and need to test some issues about a web portal.

Documents received. Check!

Adjust Project practices. Check!
Turns out everyone hates track changes, finds them hard to follow and visually a mess. People will contribute to editing of project documents and then figure out what to do with the suggested edits later.

Social Services Agency

Ring Ring. RantWoman, two blind people ...social services agency in another city..." various communications hiccups. RantWoman realizes that dealing with a couple reasonable accommodations issues might be highly on point for the safety not only of the blind people but also of all the other customers / clients. RantWoman goes into Cheerleader Not Fairy Godmother mode: "think about what you will find helpful. Do very specific reasonable accommodations requests. Say the words 'reasonable accommodations.' Let me know how it goes."

RantWoman has not checked back in and would welcome followup from the otherside.

Cell Phone Free Zone

The sign is big enough for RantWoman to see it. HOWEVER here is a big chicken clucking reason why as a reasonable accommodations request, RantWoman not only needs to use her phone BRIEFLY bot also needs to ask that  people to tolerate noises from her talking phone  while using her one set of headphones to type on the computer. See even if RantWoman turns the volume down on her phone's screen reader, RantWoman has a bunch of other sounds built into her notifications.


Thermostat

The thermostat at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Accessibility Experimentation is a flat panel thing with lousy contrast. It is also too high on the wall for wheelchair users. Worst of all, it currently seems to wander off into some nexus of space and time where the temperature provided in no waycorresponds with what is needed. The room is freezing during business hours and warm at times the center is closed.
from an email

"...as a reasonable accommodation, can someone point us to an online version of a manual or operating instructions?  ....Also would it be possible to look at thermostats on the market and see whether it would be feasible to replace this one with something more accessible to more of our staff...?"

So far crickets by email in response. Sigh. Other hassles ahead of it in line for fussing though.

Baseball?

(RantWoman is trying again in situation involving MANY people who work in places where, RantWoman harbors the weird expectation, they might have encountered the term "reasonable accommodations." RantWoman has this weird expectation though the concept is STUNNINGLY absent from both conversation and written documents--except that RantWoman keeps  trying to bring it up and trying to suggest that a time horizon of a year is well, ridiculous.)

"...upcoming event...reasonable accommodations..."

"...how about baseball later this summer..or in a year.?"

"A YEAR? Could you remind me how that space time continuum thing is supposed to work for THIS event and the term 'reasonable accommodations'?"

Plus, you know, Baseball REALLY is not RantWoman's thing. RantWoman knows that some blind people really really like going to baseball games, following on the radio. RantWoman is NOT one of them. RantWoman has never been able to muster that level of social engagement about the topic. And suggesting "baseball" when RantWoman is trying to talk about reasonable accommdations and a specific event? PLEASE.

Frankly, RantWoman is afraid of any sport where the ball is smaller than her head. RantWoman has anxious moments from phys ed and being expect with almost non-existent depth perception to actually hit baseballs with a bat.So no, suggesting baseball in this case is really not going to make RantWoman feel all warm and fuzzy. Well maybe hot and bothered.


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