Q: can my employer do this with my ADA?
i have an ADA and requested an accommodation at work in regard to it. the accommodation is to be moved to a certain position that would allow to me to do my job better and i submitted paperwork filled out by my mental health provider to the HR department for this. they are now saying that there are no current positions available for the one I'm requesting so they said i either work without my accommodation until they can find one (which i doubt they will do anything) or i have to be put on an unpaid LOA until they can find an opening for me. are they able to do this? i am currently working for a client that have both call and chat positions. i am currently in calls and am requesting to be moved to a chat position instead because calls give me too much anxiety and cause me to have severe panic attacks but they said there are no current positions for chat that are available and they said i either have to continue to take calls despite my ada or be put into unpaid LOA until further notice
A:
Every ADA claim rests on its own particular facts and circumstances. So no one can definitively tell you what may happen in your particular case.
You are entitled to reasonable accommodations to be able to do your job with your disability as long as it does not impose an undue hardship on your employer.
A change in your position can be a reasonable accommodation. In your particular situation, I would suggest offering a second possible accommodation since your employer won't change your position. There are a variety of text-to-voice and voice-to-text programs out there at a very reasonable cost (e.g. Amazon Polly and Amazon Transcribe). Ask that your employer provide such programs for you to use until a chat position become available. If your employer refuses, that would strengthen your argument that you are being discriminated against because of your disability.
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