Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act is a nondiscrimination law. It does not require employers to undertake special activities to recruit people with disabilities; however, it is consistent with the purpose of the ADA for the University of Louisville to expand their recruitment efforts to sources of qualified candidates with disabilities. The Disability Resource Center maintains a list of disability-related organizations, agencies, and publications for job postings.
Disability Resource Center - Additional questions or concerns may be addressed with the Disability Resource Center at (502) 852-6938.
For more information regarding the ADA policies and procedures currently upheld at the University of Louisville, please contact the office of Employee Relations at (502) 852-6258.
Recruitment
All recruitment notices include information about the essential functions of a job. Specific information about essential functions will attract qualified applicants, including qualified individuals with disabilities. Listing all essential functions ensures that employees who are selected for posted vacancies are qualified to perform the job.
Information about job openings must be accessible to people with disabilities. Job information must be made available in alternative formats upon request.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Kentucky Civil Rights Act (KCRA) prohibit any pre-employment inquiries about a disability. This prohibition is necessary to assure that qualified candidates are not screened out because of their disability before their actual ability is evaluated. The prohibition on pre-employment inquiries about a disability does not prevent a department from obtaining necessary information regarding applicants’ qualifications, including medical information necessary to assess qualifications and assure health and safety on the job. In the event that medical documentation is deemed necessary for health and safety on the job, such information should be included in the job description.
Before making a job offer, a hiring authority:
- May ask questions about applicants’ abilities to perform specific job functions,
- May not make an inquiry about a disability, and
- May make a job offer that is conditional on satisfactory results of a post-offer medical examination or inquiry.
After making a conditional job offer and before an individual begins work, a hiring authority may request a medical examination or ask health-related questions, providing that all candidates who receive a conditional job offer in the same job category are required to take the same examination and respond to the same inquiries. Hiring authorities must request that any medical or evaluation results be sent directly to Employment. The appropriate Employment Representative will provide work-related information to the hiring authority. Before requesting health information, contact the appropriate Employment Representative.
Self-Identification Forms: The University of Louisville is a federal contractor, covered by the affirmative action requirements of Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, who invites individuals with disabilities to identify themselves on a Self-Identification form or by other pre-employment inquiry. Applicants are not required to disclose disabilities on any application form.
Establishing Qualification Standards and Selection Criteria
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Kentucky Civil Rights Act (KCRA) do not restrict an employer’s authority to establish the essential job qualifications, including requirements related to education, skills, work experience, licenses or certification, physical or mental abilities, health and safety, or other requirements, such as judgement, ability to work under pressure, or interpersonal skills.
The ADA and KCRA do not interfere with an employer’s authority to establish appropriate job qualifications to hire qualified people who can perform jobs effectively and safely. It is designed to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded from the jobs they can perform. Essential qualifications and selection criteria must be job-related and consistent with business necessity. They must be legitimate measures for the specific job they are being used for. It is not enough that it measures qualifications for a general class of jobs. If essential qualifications or selection criteria do not relate to the essential functions of a job and exclude an individual because of a disability, they are not consistent with business necessity.
Identifying
Essential Functions
The ADA requires all employers to focus on the essential functions of an individual vacancy to determine whether a person with a disability is qualified. This is an important nondiscrimination requirement; many people with disabilities who can perform essential job functions are denied employment because they cannot do things that are only marginal aspects of the job.
An employer’s judgement as to which functions are essential is important evidence for determining if an applicant is qualified to perform the job. A written job description prepared before advertising or interviewing applicants for a job helps demonstrate that the judgement was made independently of any applicant’s disability.
The consequences of not requiring a person in a job to perform a function are important factors to consider. Sometimes a function that is performed infrequently may be essential because there will be serious consequences if it is not performed.
To identify essential job functions, the first consideration is whether employees in the position are actually required to perform the function. If a person does perform a given function, the next consideration is whether removing that function would fundamentally change the job.
A function may be essential if:
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The position exists to perform the function;
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There are a limited number of other employees available to perform the function, or among whom the function can be distributed; and
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The function is highly specialized and a person is hired for special expertise or ability to perform it.
The work experience of previous employees in a job and the experience of current employees in similar jobs provide pragmatic evidence of actual duties performed. The employer should consult such employees and observe their work operations to identify essential job functions; the tasks actually performed provide significant evidence related to these functions.
The nature of the work operations and the employer’s organizational structure may be factors in determining whether a function is essential.
Interviews
The basic requirements regarding pre-employment inquiries and the types of questions that are prohibited on application forms also apply to job interviews. The job interview should focus on the applicant’s ability to perform the job and not on the disability.
The interviewer may describe or demonstrate the specific functions and tasks of the job and ask whether an applicant can perform these functions with or without reasonable accommodation, if this is required of everyone applying for a job in the job category, regardless of disability. If an applicant has a known disability that appears to interfere with or prevent performance of a job-related function, he or she may be asked to describe or demonstrate how this function would be performed, even if other applicants do not have to do so. Questions may be asked regarding ability to perform all job functions, not merely those that are essential to the job.
Where an applicant has a visible disability or has volunteered information about a disability, the interviewer may not ask questions about the nature of the disability, the severity of the disability, the condition causing the disability, any prognosis or expectation regarding the condition or disability, or whether the individual will need treatment or special leave because of the disability. An interviewer may not ask whether an applicant will need or request leave for medical treatment or for other disability-related reasons. The interviewer may provide information on the employer’s regular work hours, leave policies, and any special attendance needs of the job, and ask if the applicant can meet these requirements.
Departments wishing to require tests should contact the appropriate Employment Representative to ensure that such tests do not conflict with provisions of the ADA and other employment laws in general. Employers may use any kind of test to determine job qualifications. Such tests must be job-related and consistent with business necessity. Tests given to people who have sensory, speaking or manual disabilities must be in a format and manner that does not require use of an impaired skill, unless the test is designed to measure that skill. Questions related to a department’s ability to accommodate such tests or the essential functions of the position for which the test is designed should be referred to Employment.
Guidelines for Conducting an Interview
The following guidelines help to ensure that people with disabilities are given a fair and equitable opportunity to present their job qualifications.
- Make sure the department and the interviewing location(s) is accessible.
- Be willing to make reasonable accommodations to ensure equal opportunity.
- Have an in-depth knowledge of the essential job functions regarding the position for which the applicant is interviewing, as well as the details of why, how, where, when, and by whom each task or operation is performed.
- Do not speculate about how the applicant with a disability might perform the job. The person has mastered alternative techniques and skills of living and working with his or her disability. If a job function is an essential aspect of the position, ask the applicant to describe how he or she would perform the task, as one would ask of all applicants.
- Concentrate on the applicant’s technical and professional knowledge, skills, experiences, and interests – not on the disability.
- Inform the applicant if he or she is not technically or professionally qualified. If the applicant is qualified, openly discuss how he or she plans to perform the job duties, remembering that all questions should be job-related, asked in an open-ended format, and asked of all applicants.
Before making a conditional job offer, a hiring authority may not request disability, illness, or workers’ compensation information about a job applicant from a previous employer, family member, or other source, that may not be requested directly from the job applicant. A previous employer may be asked about job functions and tasks performed by the applicant, quality of the work performed, how functions were performed, attendance records, and other issues that are not disability-related. If an applicant has a known disability and has indicated that he or she could perform a job with a reasonable accommodation, a previous employer may be asked about accommodations made previously.
Medical Examinations and Inquiries
An employer may not require a job applicant to take a medical examination, respond to medical inquiries, or provide information about workers’ compensation claims before the employer makes a job offer. A hiring authority may condition a job offer on the satisfactory result of a post-offer medical examination or medical inquiry if it is required of all entering employees in the same job category. After a person begins work, a medical examination must be job-related and necessary for the business. Departments should contact their Employment Representative if considering requiring post-offer medical examinations.
If an individual is not hired because a post-offer medical examination or inquiry reveals a disability, the reason(s) for not hiring must be job-related and necessary for the business. The employer also must show that no reasonable accommodation is available that would enable the individual to perform the essential job functions or that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship. In such cases, hiring authorities are requested to contact the appropriate Employment Representative to perform such an analysis. Hiring authorities may proceed with their decision not to hire a candidate after such an analysis demonstrates that the University of Louisville is unable to provide reasonable accommodations. Employment will notify the hiring authority regarding the University’s position on its ability to accommodate.
A post-offer medical examination may disqualify an individual who would pose a "direct threat" to the health or safety of him or herself or others. It may not disqualify an individual with a disability that is able to perform essential job functions because of speculation that the disability may cause a risk of future injury.
Information from all medical examinations and inquiries must be kept apart from general personnel files as a separate, confidential medical record, available only under limited conditions.
Return to Manager Employment Resources.
