Close-up of a Reasonable Accommodation Request stamped PENDING, with a pen on the desk and a blurred wheelchair in the background.
Here’s the thing about reasonable accommodations:
The law frames them as “reasonable.” The process calls them “interactive.” But depending on whether management engages in good faith, they can either be empowering… or soul-crushing.
For many disabled professionals, the first physical reaction is anxiety. Every ping in the inbox brings the dread of having to re-prove what has already been proven. The process can feel less like collaboration and more like erosion, slowly wearing people down. Whether leadership engages in good faith makes all the difference.
And here’s the painful truth: nothing changes about an employee’s ability to do their job. They’re still the stellar hire management believed in, still delivering results. The only shift is that they ask for support to keep doing the job well, and suddenly the ground moves beneath them. Trust erodes, and that’s gut-wrenching.
Disabled employees know this feeling: the endless re-justification, the sense of being undervalued, the quiet fear of not being believed.
And managers? Believe your employees when they ask for an accommodation. Make it easy. They’re not asking for special treatment, they’re asking for what they need to keep doing the job you already knew they could do. Extra scrutiny doesn’t help anyone. It breaks trust, fuels turnover, and makes good employees want to leave.
Work with your people, not against them. That’s how accessibility works.