0:03
welcome everyone my name is Melissa Cruz um glad you could join us here today I
0:08
see folks coming in um we're gonna wait a couple minutes
0:15
here um we're just right before the hour um to start and let folks get in um and
0:21
then we'll get started but we're so glad folks can join us here today
0:32
the folks rapidly coming in so great to see everybody this should be a wonderful webinar we've got some really good
0:48
information couple more seconds here
1:01
there's still people coming in so we're g to just give it a couple more just a couple more
1:15
seconds today well today's webinar should be really informative um got some
1:20
great panelists here to to speak to you today so looking forward to it
1:40
all right well it's uh just a minute after noon so we're gonna go ahead and
1:46
get started thank you for joining us today um my name is Melissa Cruz and I'm
1:53
G to kick us off I'm the chapter engagement manager for HL hlaa and we're so glad you could join us
1:59
for this work space on um on Empower your workspace how to ask for
2:05
accommodations um I'm going to start off by giving you some tech tips next
2:12
slide okay to see the captions on this webinar you need to click on the CC icon
2:18
and click show subtitles next
2:25
slide um to increase the font size you're going to click click on um the
2:31
subtitle setting and you can uh you can uh change
2:38
the font size in the sub in the sub subtitle settings um next
2:48
slide that we'll be using the chat feature uh for technical issues and the panels only today if you'd like to ask a
2:55
question we're asking you to please use the uh Q&A icon to ask questions we'll be using the to facilitate questions um
3:02
both during the presentation and after the presentation um and we may be uh able to answer some of them as the
3:08
presentation is going on next
3:13
slide um if you've uh joined by your computer you should be in a side-by-side
3:18
view you can adjust um how the how you're viewing the
3:24
presentation um by hovering in between the two screens and um moving the gray
3:30
bar to adjust what you're seeing um if you've joined by your mobile device or
3:35
your phone your view may be slightly different and you may have to scroll scroll between views to get to the
3:40
different to get to your desired view next
3:46
slide um just a quick disclaimer that hlaa does not endorse any products um
3:52
that are addressed or featured in this webinar HLA um is providing educational opportunities to learn about new
3:58
products um opportunities and how they could benefit people with hearing loss um and we're hoping that you enjoy and
4:04
learn from this uh this webinar today um and now I'm going to turn this over to
4:11
the employment task force chair Michael Noble um Michael uh thank you for uh
4:17
putting this together for us yeah absolutely and thank you so much Melissa and first of all just want to say
4:22
welcome to everyone that join we're so glad that you are spending the next hour with us here today hopefully you'll find
4:28
this webinar very informal and also provide some resources uh to help you succeed uh whether you're in a
4:34
workplace or you're an employer or uh really all of the above and so just a quick introduction uh as Melissa said
4:40
I'm Mel Noble I took over as chair of this incredible task force from uh Dr
4:46
David Baldridge you probably remember seeing H quite a bit uh over the last few years so I have taken over that role
4:53
I have some very big shoes to fill uh because he did such an amazing job with this task force so we thank him for his
4:59
service and all that he did uh to help get the task force to where it is today so just want to really recognize and
5:05
give a shout out to everyone that you see on this screen without these people this task force could not exist and what
5:12
we really do together as a team is to try to find ways that we can help people just like you that are here with us
5:18
today uh so that you can be successful have the tips and tools uh resources that you name it to be successful uh
5:26
with your hearing loss in terms of advocacy getting the equipment that me may need so that you can do your job and
5:32
do it well that is our number one goal for you and I think our work is even more critical and important in today's
5:39
political climate so I'm really uh honored to be a part of this amazing task force and so uh without further Ado
5:45
I just want to say again thank you and welcome and I'm going to turn it over to uh our amazing speakers for the next uh
5:52
hour here so I'm going to turn it over to our Task Force member Jill to
5:57
officially introduce our speaker as well as your co-panelist Joel thank you so much
6:03
Michael and welcome everybody to our webinar today to talk about accommodations um I really hope you you
6:09
find it um helpful for you today um I will be the co-host of the webinar today um my name is Joel Herold um and I uh I
6:19
have um clear implants um and uh have been a healthcare actuary for over 30
6:25
years um joining me from the task force is Dave dellas um he is my co-host um
6:32
and he is an engineer by training and also has a hearing loss um I'm very very pleased to
6:38
introduce um today our guest speaker and that is Teresa Goddard um Teresa is a
6:44
lead consultant of assisted technology services at the job accommodation Network um if you haven't heard about
6:51
Jan before you'll learn some today um it is a wonderful resource um Teresa has
6:58
more than 15 years of experience with workplace accessibility and assist of Technology um she is well vered in the
7:06
American with Disabilities Act and an accommodation expert she specializes in
7:11
sary and cognitive workplace Solutions um Teresa regular presents on
7:17
disability and inclusion and accessibility and um has joined us today to provide an introduction to Jan um
7:24
Jan's services and share her knowledge about accommodations with us next slide
7:32
please so after Teresa's prepared remarks um we will cover um a few
7:38
questions um as uh we receive them um but then we will spend um time going
7:45
through and Dave and I will present um three different scenarios um of accommodations and talk about some of
7:51
the best practices um different ways to approach requesting accommodations and
7:56
things you might want to consider um and you are doing this as was mentioned earlier um please use the Q&A icon to
8:06
ask questions of the panelist um but if you have technical difficulties you're welcome to use the chat feature um that
8:13
is being monitored separately um and we'll handle your technical issues there so um and um we will make sure
8:21
that we leave about 10 to 15 minutes at the end um of our all of our prepared
8:27
remarks to go over the questions any answers um that that we see coming through as well as the questions that
8:33
were submitted um in advance of the during your registration for this
8:39
webinar um so without further Ado let me turn it over to
8:47
Teresa thanks Jill for that great introduction I'm Teresa Goddard and I'm here to tell you a bit about the job
8:53
accommodation Network and our resources and to share with you about our work on helping to identify
9:00
accommodation Solutions if we could have the next slide please thank
9:07
you everyone can benefit from Jan's services but our primary customer is
9:12
employers and professionals assisting employers like human resources and eeo professionals reasonable accommodation
9:20
coordinators benefits administrators uh legal and Rehabilitation professionals and so on
9:29
so when we talk about employers that could include private employers of all types and sizes uh federal state local
9:36
government agencies Etc our mission at Jan is to help people learn about
9:41
workplace accommodations and understand their roles responsibilities and rights under
9:48
the Ada we provide practical ways to engage in the accommodation process and
9:54
workplace accommodation resources including
10:00
referrals information on equipment and assist of technology and services now
10:06
our service does not include providing legal advice or legal advocacy and we don't have the authority to enforce the
10:14
law uh now I'd really quickly like to look at the askjan.org page for
10:20
employers on our homepage if we could have the next slide
10:25
please thank you I mentioned the askjan.org page for
10:30
employers earlier this is a good starting place for employers who are seeking accommodation process resources
10:37
and information it includes links to information regarding various employer
10:43
focused and accommodation topics the employer page includes
10:48
sections such as processing accommodation requests for
10:54
hiring processing accommodation requests from employees
11:01
and developing policies and procedures so in each section you would find resources provided by Jan the EEOC and
11:09
other relevant organizations and some of our top resources include five practical tips for
11:16
providing and maintaining effective job accommodations sample forms uh if you're
11:22
an employee you might also want to look at the sample forms on our website just to kind of compare maybe something you
11:27
received from your employer uh to what's kind of standard in the field a lot of times people wonder if
11:35
the form that they're receiving is like a normal form and there's no such thing uh really but we do have sample forms to
11:42
guide you we also have an employer's practical guide to reasonable accommodation during
11:49
the hiring process we do get a lot of questions about what's okay and not okay during hiring and another really popular
11:56
one is called why communication is key key to the accommodation process so you can find a lot of
12:03
resources that are geared toward employers here if appropriate you could refer an employer to this as well but
12:10
I'd like to move on and look at the next slide which will be our one of our big focuses for today it's our slide on
12:16
resources for individuals with disabilities their family members and Advocates if we could have the next
12:23
slide please
12:31
so to assist individuals with disabilities uh and also employee
12:37
Representatives like Union reps service providers Rehabilitation or medical professionals even educational
12:44
professionals friends and family members uh even Advocates Jan does provide some practical information that
12:51
could be of help to you our resources include information
12:56
about requesting and negotiating reason accommodations accommodation Solutions
13:02
basic information about the employment provisions of the Ada just practical resources that you can really use I'd
13:09
like to next take a look at the ask Jan page for individuals which you can get through through our homepage navigation
13:16
menu if we could have the next slide so the askjan.org page for
13:23
individuals includes information useful to individuals with disabilities uh and also their family
13:30
members and various professionals that might be assisting them for example
13:35
you'll find a section on how to disclose disability and request accommodations
13:40
which links to information on such topics as disability
13:46
disclosure uh FAQ basic Ada and accommodation process
13:51
questions requesting a negotiating a reasonable
13:56
accommodation how to request an accommodation accommodation form
14:03
letter sample language for accommodation request letters and others I'd say one of the
14:10
most popular resources on this page is um probably the one on how to write an
14:17
accommodation request letter it doesn't tell you exactly what to write but it does have a nice outline that you can
14:23
use to design your own letter another popular resource that I send out on a
14:28
daily basis bis is the Practical guidance for medical professionals providing
14:34
sufficient medical documentation and support of a patients accommodation request now of course there are some
14:42
scenarios where technically uh as a person with a disability you might not have to share too much medical
14:49
documentation this usually happens when the disability and the need for accommodation are both
14:56
obvious however sometimes uh for a person who is hard of
15:01
hearing particularly they might be considered a
15:07
person with a hidden disability uh or a disability that's not
15:12
totally obvious perhaps we might say nonapparent and what this means
15:17
is if the employer can't tell in an obvious way that you have a disability
15:24
you might need to disclose that information to them in order to get what you need at work
15:30
additionally if it's not completely obvious what you need you might need to provide some medical
15:36
documentation perhaps from your primary care provider maybe an audiologist maybe an ENT even a vocational rehabilitation
15:45
counselor to substantiate your request to make it very clear to your employer
15:51
why it's needed this document can be very helpful to a medical professional who's trying to help you out with that
15:57
it includes uh just a brief amount of information just four pages of background about the
16:03
Ada and why this uh type of letter may be needed and there's a sample letter at the back so if you have the time I do
16:11
suggest looking at that okay if we could have the next
16:16
slide please I'd like to show you an additional resource on the Jan web page this is Jan's a toz of disabilities and
16:24
accommodations page this is just a screenshot you can see we have information
16:29
organized by disability by limitation by work rated function by topic and by
16:36
accommodation now I'll tell you A lot of people will look at this list of
16:42
disabilities and say my disability isn't on here this isn't an inclusive list
16:48
this is just a list of things that we frequently get a lot of questions on there's no list of conditions that are
16:54
always covered employers are supposed to use the definition of dis ability to figure
16:59
out if someone is covered or not now the way it works for people who are deaf or hard of hearing you need to have an
17:06
impairment and that's like your diagnosis so if you have uh hearing a
17:11
related issues related to say prusis or age related hearing loss
17:17
prusis would be your impairment and if you're substantially Limited in a major life
17:24
activity due to that impairment then you can be covered under the ad
17:30
um that's the most common way to be covered now there are other ways to be covered too you can have a history of an
17:35
impairment um and there's another way of being covered called regarded as that isn't really related to what we're
17:40
talking about today but if you have an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity it's very likely
17:48
that you can be covered and hearing is on the eoc's list of major
17:54
life activities so that's how people who are deaf or heart of hearing typically show coverage now if we have time what
18:01
I'd like to do is just screen share for a moment and give you a brief tour of this
18:18
page okay let me just find my share button
18:28
okay and if I've done this correctly you should now be seeing a toz of disabilities and
18:34
accommodations uh if you're not someone please speak up good so here great so if
18:40
you scroll down you'll be able to see a wider view of what I've been talking about under by disability we have
18:46
various medical conditions impairments if you will uh listed
18:51
alphabetically in columns starting with Addison's disease and going all the way
18:57
down to vertigo so here you'll find various
19:06
conditions and we have hearing listed under hearing impairment the reason we do use the word impairment is because
19:12
that's the language used by the EEOC um I know if I had control over
19:18
this page I would probably say Deen heart of hearing uh rather than uh
19:24
putting it quite that way we do have a separate listing for deafness however so if you're looking for something specific
19:30
to deafness we have that here so what you could do is click
19:37
on U say deafness and see an explanation of uh deafness and how that
19:45
interacts with title one of the Americans with Disabilities Act some questions for employers to
19:52
consider various accommodations and also some situations and solutions drawn from hand case
20:00
data likewise we can go um to the bottom of
20:06
the second column and click on this information about hearing related
20:14
disabilities and see some basic information accommodation ideas
20:20
situations and solutions uh similar to what I'm going to be going over later today and also some articles
20:28
that are related to hearing in the workplace just in case you need to provide your employer with some additional
20:35
information okay so thank you so much for looking at that with me at this time I'd like to go back to showing slides so
20:43
I'm going to stop
20:52
sharing okay so we should now be seeing um the slides
20:59
and I'd like to move on to the first scenario so this is my favorite part of
21:06
every webinar um I always like to share a few practical real the world examples
21:11
from Jan's case data so today's cases are ones that I was involved in where
21:17
someone contacted Jan about a workplace accommodation issue and I'll tell you a little bit about what happened and about
21:24
some twists and turns that you might encounter as you go through an accommodation process
21:29
so here's an example of kind of a typical problem that we receive uh an inquiry about at Jan it involves
21:36
telephone access an employee who was hard of hearing was having difficulty
21:41
communicating by phone with co-workers and clients she was getting really good reviews but she had a lot of fatigue and
21:48
frustration when on the phone uh sometimes she might have to ask people to repeat and she didn't like doing that
21:55
um the people on the other end weren't that crazy about it either um so she was looking for a solution next slide
22:06
please so after looking at various options uh the employer selected one that's actually pretty Common Place the
22:13
employer off offered a telephone captioning service and provided a caption
22:18
compatible phone uh the phone also had telecoil features so for a person with a
22:24
telecoil enabled hearing aid that could be really helpful
22:29
um if you weren't aware if you're a telecoil enabled hearing aid user there are also headsets that are manufactured
22:37
to be compatible with your hearing aid and you can contact Jan for
22:42
information on examples of vendors who sell that type of thing if you need that for your
22:48
employer so there are a lot of things that could have worked in this scenario an amplified phone might have improved
22:54
the signal to noise ratio especially if the person didn't already use a hearing aid
22:59
telephone amplifiers to connect to the phone can kind of do the same thing if she had been a sign language
23:06
user a video phone might have made more sense and uh also her job could have been restructured to reduce phone use if
23:14
phone use wasn't an essential function of the job so there are different ways to solve a situation this is what was
23:19
chosen next slide but what if there's a
23:26
Twist in this case there was the employee found it really cumbersome to
23:32
monitor an additional screen for captions um actually she was already monitoring a chat client that the
23:38
employer received inquiries on so monitoring two screens at once was
23:45
cumbersome and to make matters even more complicated there was an upgrade to the
23:51
employer's phone system they were switching over to viip technology so the captioning support I
23:58
just really weren't sure how they were going to continue providing that in a viip environment so the employee scheduled an
24:05
appointment with an audiologist and U they decided to get theel get themselves some hearing aids and they were fitted
24:11
with really nice high-end hearing aids Bluetooth technology um another type of Wireless
24:19
technology a little more modern than telecoil also so they were really nice top-of-the-line hearing aids
24:28
let's see what happened next could we have of slide 20
24:38
please so the employee after getting fitted with the hearing aids also worked with her audiologist the hearing aid
24:45
company and an at service provider to find a device that would let her connect
24:51
to the new phone system it turned out that the simplest solution would be to for the employer to
24:57
provide a Bluetooth enable phone uh and also to
25:02
purchase uh a streaming device that would allow her hearing aids to connect really efficiently to the Bluetooth
25:09
enabled phone now if you run into a situation like this most of the hearing aid
25:15
vendors have a Bluetooth hotline that you can contact if you want to figure out how to connect your hearing aids to
25:21
a phone in the best possible way there's more than one way to do it in this case they also considered an older method
25:29
uh that didn't involve a bluetooth enabled phone but uh had some adapters to kind of make the existing phone work
25:36
with Bluetooth but ultimately the employer decided that it was going to be easier
25:43
and in the long run more efficient just to switch to a bluetooth enabled phone and I think going forward that's often
25:49
going to be the case there was also an added benefit in this case the remote
25:54
mic um or the device that they for streaming to the phone actually also
26:00
served as a remote mic and she could use it at in-person meetings throughout the facility so that's an example of where
26:08
someone really worked with their hearing provider um with an assist of tech
26:16
provider and with their employer there was a lot of communication involved to
26:21
find the best solution I'd say communication is absolutely key for any accommodation
26:27
scenario and you need to be prepared that there could be bends in the road that you weren't expecting if you will
26:33
next slide please let's talk about another solution
26:39
uh this one also involving hearing aids uh a new hire with bluetooth enabled hearing aids needed to work in a secure
26:46
facility but wireless devices were prohibited within the facility the employer determined that
26:52
the device recommended by the audiologist so this is a different person uh for use in meeting ings
26:58
face-to-face conversations and for telephone access could not be permitted
27:03
due to their policy against wireless devices now the first thing I always think in these type of scenarios is can
27:10
the policy be modified in other words the policy stays the same for everyone else you can still prohibit wireless
27:16
devices but we modify how it applies to this specific employee so that they can have their disability related piece of
27:25
equipment let's see what happened next slide please
27:30
unfortunately and this does happen more often than I would like the employer was unable to modify their policy uh to
27:37
allow the devices so the employee said hey I'm willing to work from home and then I can just you know use my device
27:43
at home it won't be in your building and the employer said nope that
27:49
won't work this work is top secret we can't allow you to do it from home you have to do it here
27:58
they also had an open cubicle environment and that was posing some significant communication
28:04
challenges so the employer contacted us kind of after getting to this point
28:11
to say what else could we possibly do we're looking for Solutions here we really want this person we want them to
28:18
stay and be happy but we can't modify the policy the
28:24
way they want and they're still having problems so I don't know what solution
28:29
they ultimately chose because while we do followup data we don't always have it as quickly
28:37
as I would like but at the last point that I talked to this employer they said they had
28:43
identified a category of hearing aids that were acceptable to them he said we
28:48
can't allow their current hearing aid if they had one of these 1 2 3 four five or
28:54
so hearing aids we could allow it but we can't allow the ones they have now and
28:59
they were actually considering something that is a little bit unusual they were considering whether they could make a
29:06
purchase and get this person new hearing aids that met their security requirements that's very
29:13
unusual some other ways they could have potentially gone they could have worked on that open cubical environment and
29:18
tried to get them a private office um they could have done some more research into the level of encryption on
29:25
the Bluetooth there are a lot of things that they could have considered we don't know exactly how this turned out but I was
29:31
really encouraged by this employer because they were so willing to look outside the box for Solutions I really
29:38
feel like this employee is going to be okay if we could have the next
29:45
slide so to kind of follow up on that thanks to some advances in encryption
29:51
technology we do have some employers that are taking another look at their Wireless policies um I'm not allowed to
29:58
tell you who's talk to Jan so I can't tell you what employer I mean here but I did recently talk to a very large
30:05
employer that had prohibited Bluetooth hearing aids on several parts of their campus for a very long
30:12
time and they did tell me that because encryption has improved so
30:17
much they had been able to identify bluetooth enabled hearing aids that they
30:22
were able to permit now and they're they're changing their overall policy
30:28
uh on wireless devices to reflect the fact that some hearing aids are okay for use in their facility now so that was a
30:35
huge change something I've been hoping for for a long time some other approaches that we've
30:40
seen employers try include the following making decisions about hearing aids on a caseby casee basis depending
30:48
on the brand and the model and the encryption used if any you know most of them are going to have some encryption
30:54
now preparing An approved list of hearing aid Brands models and accessories like we saw in the last
31:01
example purchasing hearing aids for use at work so this is something that's permitted but rarely required but we're
31:09
seeing more openness to it and also using alternate supports
31:15
like community-based captioners and ASL interpreters who would have an appropriate security clearance uh or
31:22
just an appropriate level of trust for that particular employer that's an old school approach that we we used to see a
31:28
lot back in 2008 when I first started we see it less now but it's still a possibility in some
31:35
settings so that wraps up my discussion of scenarios I do have just a couple of quick slides to share with you if we
31:41
could see the next one if you're interested in contacting Jan uh either just to see our resources
31:49
or for a free confidential consultation anybody can have one you can reach us on
31:54
a variety of social media uh Facebook LinkedIn X YouTube We got some videos
32:02
that you might want to look at next slide and also you can reach us um at
32:08
askjan.org we have a live chat through our website you can email us with questions or call us at 1 1800 526
32:17
7234 again it's a free service it's confidential we're funded by the US Department of Labor office of disability
32:23
employment policy to bring this service to the public and we really hope that you'll reach out if you have any
32:29
questions at all next slide I know I talked a lot so I don't
32:35
know how much question time we have but I'm happy to take some of this time yeah thank you so much Teresa and well said
32:42
and well done we thank you again so much for joining us so I'm gonna turn it over to uh Jill and Dave uh because we do
32:48
have about maybe five minutes that we can just take some questions but we'll have more time at the very end for additional questions so uh Dave what
32:55
what questions do we have from the audience that we can take yeah thanks Michael so um yeah we got a few questions um one of them is can you
33:04
talk a little bit Teresa more about an employer's obligation to uh purchase or
33:09
reimburse uh hearing aids thanks David that's a great question and it's one that comes up a
33:15
lot so much in fact that I have a prepared email on it if anybody's interested um so the purchase of hearing
33:22
aids is almost never required as an accommod under
33:29
Ada uh Title One or rehab act 501 and here's why anything that you need both
33:36
on the job and off the job like when you're out in the community for instance
33:42
um when you're shopping at the doctor's office um doing everything that you do
33:47
in your day-to-day life that's usually considered a personal use item and the
33:54
EEOC the place that enforces the law EEOC is short for equal employment opportunity commission they say
34:00
employers don't have to provide personal use items as a reasonable accommodation now they can if
34:07
they choose to and sometimes it's the simplest approach but it's it's almost never
34:14
something that an employer would be required to do an exception would be
34:20
when it comes to hearing aids what if the hearing aid is actually not a personal use item in this particular
34:26
case what if if this employee absolutely only needs the hearing aid for a work-related purpose or only in the work
34:34
environment I'll give you an example we once had a question about a
34:39
lifeguard uh and the employer was really strongly wanting this employer to wear
34:46
their hearing aids when they were in the lifeguard's chair uh and observing uh the swimming
34:53
area in front of them now the Lifeguard said hey I use my eyes to monitor this
34:59
field I've never worn my hearing aids in the chair because if they get wet
35:05
they're going to be ruined my hearing aids are not water resistant or waterproof I don't want to do
35:12
this so the Vocational Rehabilitation therapist working on the case contacted us for information about you know what
35:19
approaches could we take here and they ultimately requested that the employer
35:25
purchase water resistant or waterproof hearing aids for use at
35:30
work as as the person's accommodation request and as always there was a plot
35:37
twist um if I recall correctly in that case the employer kind of opened up a
35:44
little bit to discussing the possibility of them not using their hearing aids
35:49
specifically in the tower and looking at other Solutions um like using their
35:55
visual abilities as they always had and maybe looking at some other type of alerting
36:01
equipment uh or some other types of amplifiers that were not quite hearing
36:07
aids but could still be helpful uh to the individual so by making that request
36:13
which is an unusual request um that helped the employer to open up and re-engage in the process so
36:19
that they could find a solution that was going to work better for both sides great question thank you so much
36:26
David and I think we have for one more question okay yeah this um question I
36:31
think is probably on a lot of people's minds given the current situation which is with the current
36:38
Administration do you see how that's going to affect accommodations and Ada rights for deaf and heart appearing
36:46
individuals that's a great question um I have to
36:51
say we're in a time that uh doesn't give us a lot to go on in terms of figuring
36:58
out what happens next certainly um title one of the
37:03
Americans with Disabilities Act is still in place you can still contact the EOC
37:09
to file a complaint there are certain accommodation requests that we're seeing
37:15
more push back on currently one would be Tela workk uh we've had many inquiries
37:22
over the years from individuals who are hard of hearing who have told us I like work working from home specifically
37:29
because I can control the background noise I can control the volume from my
37:35
computer it's more private I don't have all the background noise that I have in the office um I used to sit by The
37:42
copier and everybody was talking the machine made noise my hearing aid picked it up and it was a real problem I like
37:48
being home can I still do that and in the past it usually was less
37:54
of an issue employers were fairly open now we're seeing more push back on that type of request
38:01
specifically but I don't know um in the future exactly where things will go and
38:09
uh where the legal system will take us I think that's a big unknown but Jan's going to stay around as long as we are
38:15
able and be there for you as things happen so I hope you'll get in touch if
38:21
any of you out there are concerned about your accommodation request just please get in touch we'd be
38:28
happy to speak with you I personally would be happy to speak with anyone who's on today at any time and you can
38:34
reach me through that phone number we do have a few more questions but not time enough to address them here
38:41
but um Teresa you can answer these via email later is that correct yes I'd be happy to great yeah and to that point um
38:50
HLA will post the responses along with the recording uh so that will be available on the HLA website so you can
38:56
get those additional resources so just want to say thank you so much Teresa for the great insights great guidance and
39:02
great tips and really appreciate your last sound bite about being there to support especially in these fairly
39:07
uncertain times for a lot of people so just want to say thank you again so yep well with that we'll go ahead and move
39:14
right into our uh fun part as well uh continuing the the scenarios that Teresa
39:20
did um so I'm going to bring back up Jill and Dave and they're going to walk you through three scenarios
39:28
yeah could you go to the next slide Michael okay yeah we have a few scenarios here that we'd like to outline
39:35
and and Jill and I will um basically do some role playing to say how you might
39:40
go about addressing these situation so here's the first situation so we have Maria who is a marketing englist with
39:47
hearing loss and she really finds it difficult to follow discussions and virtual meetings because there is no
39:53
captioning and so she wants to request real time captionings uh but is unsure how to
40:00
approach her manager who has never dealt with this accommodation request before so Jill I guess you're
40:09
Maria yeah um so excuse me one of the most common challenges employees faced
40:14
with hearing loss um is following discussions and virtual meetings um especially difficult when multiple
40:21
people are speaking at once um if there's poor audio quality or if there's
40:27
a lot of of background noise um many employers may not be aware that there are low cost or even free options
40:33
available um many um platforms such as um zoom and teams have ai generated
40:41
captions and while they may not be perfect they may work in some scenarios um I use them very frequently and find
40:48
them to be extremely helpful um so if you haven't tried the autogenerated
40:53
captions I encourage you to do so um because even though they're not perfect
40:58
it's often time U it's often better than nothing and it certainly can help for
41:04
those on the-fly conversations that happen however those um captions that
41:10
happen the auto um generated captions are not perfect by any means and a cart
41:17
provider um can be brought in sometimes to provide live highly accurate captions
41:22
during scheduled meetings um cart can be particularly helpful when there are extra challenges such as people with
41:29
different accents or technical or medical terminology that's just not in
41:34
the common language um when you go to request the accommodation it's important here um for
41:42
Maria to be really specific about um what's challenging her um Maria would
41:48
also need to be specific um or be a good idea she'd be specific about why those
41:53
autogenerated captions or a speech to text app isn't adequate and why the cart
41:59
provides a more reliable solution for her um in those specific situations um another thing that Maria
42:06
will want to do is to um frame the request in a way that highlights both
42:12
the necessity of the accommodation and its benefits for productivity um and it's important um and it can be very
42:19
helpful to not just think about Maria's own productivity but think about the
42:24
productivity of the other meeting participants um because when using cart there's often a transcription of the
42:31
meeting um that's available and um we now have all these AI capabilities you
42:37
can take a transcription from a meeting and put it into AI to create a summary
42:42
notes from the meeting um those meeting notes can then be shared with all the meeting participants as well as those
42:48
that are unable to attend that particular meeting so there's many ways that even though cart would be helping
42:55
one person like Maria and particular it can actually be used to help the productivity of everybody um that's
43:02
attending the meeting or that um wasn't able to attend um because they missed out so pointing out those benefits to
43:09
the employer can also help make it um seem more palatable to the employer to provide that particular
43:15
accommodation Dave yeah that's a great point because you know from an employer's perspective uh their primary
43:22
concerns of course are cost and implementation and so um by offering uh
43:28
a potential solution that provides benefits for other people because I
43:33
think I think a lot of times you know those of us that are deaf and hard and hearing we serve as sort of canaries in
43:40
the coal mine for just an untenable work situation so we may be having problems U
43:46
but other people may be normal hearing people may be having problems as well so
43:51
this investment can pay uh dividends uh in that regard um and think I think you
43:58
know in order to um to improve the odds that you can uh uh get the
44:04
accommodations you need um you know by coming along with requests but also
44:09
potential Solutions uh particularly if uh you know management or HR really
44:16
hasn't done this before can really help out quite a bit um kind of overcoming
44:21
that unfamiliarity aspect uh with your situation uh is is almost always a good
44:30
thing let's um let's go on to the next scenario okay um this is a scenario
44:38
where uh uh there's a software developer Mark who has hearing loss and they have
44:44
an open Office layout and this is one I can personally um kind of uh resonate
44:50
with because yeah I've been in op open Office environments before and it's uh it's not great uh it really makes
44:58
hearing difficult you know to follow discussions to hear colleagues to talk on the phone he wants to request um
45:06
either a quad workspace or some kind of sound masking device but really worries
45:11
that his employer will uh dismiss the request due to concerns about
45:17
fairness so Jill how would you go about this one well um fairness is definitely a
45:24
concern of many employers um and because it could disrupt um you know Team
45:31
Dynamics it could um say an unfair precedent um to provide a type of
45:36
accommodation um so it's really important that when Mark is requesting accommodations here that he is specific
45:44
about the challenges that he is facing and how it impacts his productivity um
45:50
and by getting specific in this situation he might say that the background noise um makes it difficult
45:56
for me to here and process conversations which impacts my ability to collaborate
46:01
effectively um it makes it so much clearer to get specific rather than simply stating it's too noisy um so make
46:09
sure that you know there's always a good clear definition of what the issue is um
46:15
so that it can be addressed um and then proposing um Solutions is a good way to
46:21
show that you're participating and making it helps it make it more actionable um but Mark um as in every
46:29
scenario and kind of Teresa got to this earlier too um I Mark will need to be
46:35
flexible um in trying different things that the employer wants to explore um
46:40
and also patient um it can be an iterative process to go through and find the right accommodation that's going to
46:46
work for you um but that's you know so be patient it takes time um but be a
46:53
willing participant throughout it and um more than likely you'll will end up with a good accommodation there um another
47:00
tip that I wanted to mention um is for Mark and for really any scenario that
47:05
you're requesting accommodation is that after you meet um with your manager or HR to have um a conversations about
47:13
accommodations follow up each meeting with an email discussing what um or
47:19
covering what was discussed and noting what the next steps are and preferably with including a greed upon timeline um
47:26
that can help the process continue to move along if there's something in
47:32
writing yeah the fairness concern is is real you know the from employer
47:37
standpoint their automatic first reaction is all if we do this for one person don't we have to do it for all
47:42
especially if the accommodation is viewed by the general population as a a
47:48
perk um I think it's important to you know tell the employer that you know the
47:54
Ada doesn't really require you to make this a general policy that this is just
47:59
this is an accommodation for a person with um with the need for that
48:04
accommodation and um you know they can also be reminded of the fact as we said in the first scenario that a lot of
48:11
times these accommodations provide benefits for um other people as well as
48:16
just the person seeking the accommodation okay I if I could build
48:22
just briefly on what you said sure uh and David
48:27
uh at the Jan website you can find in the employee section a resource that
48:33
could be helpful with those follow-up emails you mentioned Jill we have um a
48:38
sample of an accommodation inquiry letter that can be used to follow up on
48:44
a request uh when it seems like progress may be stalled or or things haven't been
48:50
implemented uh along the timelines that we're hoped for so that may be a good
48:55
place to look if you um want some ideas for that type of a follow-up
49:01
email and I absolutely agree David accommodations have benefits far beyond
49:06
the employee who's seeking an accommodation it can be great for the whole team and that's why some employers
49:12
who may even be too small to fall under the Ada often still choose to provide
49:17
accommodation it's it's helpful for the flow of the entire work environment if
49:23
everybody has what they need to be successful very
49:30
true all right the last scenario we like to talk about is uh one dealing with
49:36
cost so here we have Jessica who's a near new hire and uh she discloses her
49:42
need for uh accommodations uh while she's being onboarded by the company and
49:48
uh her manager seems hesitant you know stating that the accommodations are expensive and it may not be possible
49:54
within the company's budget constraint um so this is a very common uh situation
50:00
I believe and uh how would you go about this Joel um well excuse me I've included a
50:09
link on this slide to um to Jan um because it is such a common concern
50:15
about cost that Jan has a lot of um great topics and things to talk about that so use that link um but one of the
50:22
biggest myths about workplace accommodations is that they're expensive um the reality is is that most of the
50:29
accommodations can cost little to nothing um and Jan has done research on
50:34
this and they keep track of all the support that they provide um nearly 60% of accommodations cost nothing at all
50:41
according to Jan's research and the average of those um that do cost something is just
50:47
$500 um so in my opinion $500 is a small cost to benefit from retention of
50:54
experienced workers and increased product it um among many other potential
50:59
benefits um however we realize that some employers may still push back due to
51:04
budget concerns D yeah I think it's oh
51:09
sorry oh yeah okay I think it's it's also worth noting that um in many cases
51:16
uh by providing accommodations uh there are tax incentives and induction uh
51:22
incentives and deductions that uh that employers can seek um there is the
51:28
disabled Access Credit uh that can cover up to 50% of
51:33
accommodations uh in certain cases and employers can mention these programs uh
51:39
when discussing accommodations with HR as many employees are are just aw
51:44
unaware that that these options exist and is Teresa is this an area that you
51:50
can elaborate on at all uh yes I'd be happy to um if you do
51:56
go to the Jan website uh and look at the cost information you know for many years a typical cost was 500 and we've seen it
52:03
go as high as 600 when there's a one-time cost so that's the median um
52:09
for those employers who reported a one-time cost but we've actually seen that moving recently uh
52:18
and in the most recent data set of those accommodations that did
52:24
have a one-time cost the median onetime expenditure reported by Employers in the last data set was actually
52:32
$300 U so that's even more affordable than in the past now when there's an
52:37
ongoing accommodation um that can be a little bit different so those with ongoing
52:43
accommodation costs did have a higher median annual cost but when there's a one-time cost it's very affordable and
52:49
as you said way over half of accommodations don't cost anything we're always willing to talk with employers
52:55
who are seeking uh a way to meet everyone's needs while
53:01
also staying within the budget so employers and employees can feel free to contact us as well and honestly voke
53:08
rehab can be very helpful in these scenarios as well fantastic thank you Michael we're
53:16
at the uh Q&A section yes so we have about uh eight minutes left here and
53:21
we'll carve out the two last two minutes just to wrap up so that gives us about five minutes so I'm going to try crank
53:26
through as much as we can but just reminder we will answer any remaining questions after the webinar Teresa will
53:32
help respond and we'll post that to the HLA website along with the recording so
53:37
um I'm gonna ask this first question and just ask uh the panelist to be as brief as possible so we can get through as much as possible uh the first one uh
53:44
maybe you Jill could take this one and then Teresa if you want to add anything feel free to do so the question is how
53:50
many accommodations can an employee ask for could could one ask for something uh
53:55
like for a meeting and then something to use on the telephone so is there a limit is a question oh there is absolutely no limit
54:02
to the number of accommodations that an employee can request um I encourage you to request every accommodation that
54:08
might be useful for you if you can State what the problem is um and be specific
54:14
about it and look for Solutions um yeah there's no reason not to get U multiple
54:19
Solutions if they're needed and sometimes um like Teresa mentioned a sample earlier where one particular
54:25
solution actually resolved and address multiple situations very good yeah I I agree Jill
54:33
um I think people should uh certainly ask for accommodations when they realize
54:38
one is needed and you might realize that you have needs at multiple times
54:43
throughout the employment life cycle um certainly at first it makes sense to give an employer an idea of all of the
54:51
various things that could be helpful to you and then when you're negotiating your accommodation you might land with
54:57
with some of the things you had in mind and maybe some other things that you hadn't thought of that the that the
55:02
employer is coming up with uh I just think it's good negotiation to come forward with um a variety of things that
55:10
you think could be helpful to you at the start of the process and don't be afraid to address new concerns as they
55:18
arise excellent thank you both so much for those great responses this next question I think might be best for you
55:24
uh Teresa so this one is I were hearing aids so how do I answer the question on the job application that asks do you
55:31
have a disability and also a common question to kind of wrap this into one is should you disclose you have a
55:37
hearing loss during the interview process you know I think responding to
55:42
those types of questions um it's challenging to to say how
55:49
everyone should answer those questions because it's a very personal thing some people choose to be very very open about
55:55
um disability and about the various techniques and strategies and Equipment they use to help them others don't want
56:03
to muddy the waters early on when we're thinking about uh answering a question
56:08
like do you have a disability um yes or no it's important to think about why
56:13
that question is being asked and also whether the question should be asked in
56:19
that way so one reason why an employer might uh ask if you have a disability is
56:25
if you've asked for an accommodation for the hiring process that does open the door for the employer to ask about why
56:31
you need that accommodation so if you've asked for something like questions in advance or
56:37
captioning during your video interview uh and the employer wants to know why
56:43
you'll increase your chances of getting what you need if you disclose that uh also some employers may be
56:51
required because of their funding stream um to uh track things things like um
56:58
information related to disability so that they're complying with everything that they need to comply with but when
57:04
that happens it's it's usually going to be say that's voluntary and there will
57:09
often be an option to uh say that you prefer not to respond uh and I've chosen that option
57:16
myself when I've um been interviewed by federal contractors or employed by them
57:22
uh because I know that they're going to use this form but I'm not always comfortable with everybody who might see
57:28
that form knowing everything about me so sometimes I pick choose not to respond even though I've worked for a lot of
57:34
very disability forward organizations uh so it's very very
57:39
personal also keep in mind the way the question is worded matters so sometimes
57:45
uh a person may be asking about disability uh but you're not sure if
57:52
it's an okay question or not you have to really think carefully about how to answer this happened to me I had an
57:59
interviewer ask me do you have any disabilities that would interfere with you doing this
58:04
job uh and and I do have disabilities but I didn't think they would interfere with the job and I felt that I could
58:11
honestly answer no I don't have any disabilities that would interfere with my ability to do
58:17
this job another person answering that question might have gone a different way and I would respect their
58:24
choice perfect and I think we can squeeze in one more question um and I
58:29
may just ask you to be really brief on your response if you can this one is as an employer how do you determine
58:35
reasonable accommodations and I know that can be a big question
58:42
Bri oh dear I don't know if I can answer that one quickly but a good place to start is to reach out to Professionals
58:50
in the field and also reach out to the individual who is requesting accommodation because they are the
58:57
expert on their own experience and they can tell you a lot about what has worked for them in the past um and also they
59:04
can tell you if something is working for them now or not so I believe the individual with a disability who's
59:10
seeking an accommodation is one of the most important people you can communicate with you can also go on our
59:16
website to get accommodation ideas for a variety of conditions or contact Jan for a free consultation and there are also
59:23
many other professionals doing great work in this field uh talk to whomever you think would suit your needs
59:29
best well said thank you so much Teresa well I think that uh brings us pretty much to an end and so just want
59:37
to say thank you again so much for investing this hour with us and I want to give a special shout out and thank
59:44
you to Teresa GD for joining us I know you put a lot of time and preparation into this wonderful presentation so
59:49
can't thank you enough on behalf of the task force and of course our audience members and I also want to thank Jill and Dave as well for all of your
59:55
preparation work really appreciate your partnership and with that yeah and TR
1:00:00
did you want to say anything oh just that it's been a pleasure thank you for uh for letting me be here with this great group today oh excellent It's been
1:00:08
a privilege all right well with that I'm GNA turn it over to Melissa to officially adjourn and wrap us up thank
1:00:14
you Michael um I just again want to thank all the panelists I want to thank our wonderful live captioner uh Joe Gail
1:00:22
and um thank you all for being here as uh the audience um hope we've you know
1:00:28
provided you some really good information the questions if we didn't get to your question today um Teresa has
1:00:34
offered to uh take a look at those and uh put together answers those will be available on our website along with the
1:00:42
webinar um and the slides so we look forward to having you visit and and see
1:00:48
that um please join us for future webinars um and also there will be um
1:00:53
our team from the employment uh task force will be presenting at the convention in Indianapolis this summer
1:01:00
so please feel free to join us there more information about that can be found on our website and again thank you so
1:01:06
much for being here so have a good day by thank you