Navigating the reasonable accommodation (RA) process can be complex. This page is designed to support supervisors by providing clear guidance to help ensure employees receive the accommodations they need.
Interim Reasonable Accommodation (RA)
Due to an increase in RA requests, supervisors can submit an interim RA form for qualified employees with temporary accommodations while the formal RA process is underway.
To request an interim RA, please contact [email protected] or attend an Interim Accommodations Training via the Learning Management System (LMS). Please note that you must use your PIV card to access LMS.
Our office has also developed a training resource to explain the RA process and guide supervisors through completing interim accommodation forms. The presentation is available at the link below.
Interim Accommodation Training
Requests that are Not Reasonable Accommodations
The following five types of requests do not qualify as RAs pursuant to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and its adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA):
Removing an essential job function:
An RA is a tool to remove a workplace barrier due to a disability or disabling medical condition. How the position is performed changes, not the position itself. Therefore, decision makers should not approve interim accommodations that remove an essential job function. However, accommodations may modify or remove ancillary job functions, which are incidental to the position but not fundamental to its purpose.Replacing sick leave:
If an employee is unable to perform the core functions of their job due to illness, injury, or a medical procedure, they need to take sick leave. An RA is a tool to help an employee do the job, not a means for an employee to preserve leave. For example, if an employee requests an accommodation for a surgery, the decision maker should see a combination of sick leave and the RA. Sick leave should be used for the surgery and the convalescence period (period of recovery usually impairing activities of daily living, example: sitting up after back surgery). The RA would be submitted for the recuperation period where the employee is healing from the surgery and a major life activity is impaired, but they are able to perform the essential functions of their position. Working with our established example, weeks after a back surgery the employee can sit at a desk and work but requires breaks to alleviate pressure from their back which would potentially impact their ability to commute safely to the worksite. A decision maker should not see a request for telework the day of a scheduled medical procedure.Providing work-life balance:
An RA is a tool to remove a workplace barrier due to a disability or a disabling medical condition. It is not intended to provide scheduling flexibility. Approving a request on the basis of work life balance contravenes the Rehabilitation Act and its adoption of the ADA and the ADAAA, and does not constitute an RA.Caring for a family member (includes children and parents):
The Rehabilitation Act and its adoption of the ADA and the ADAAA, does not extend to the family members of a federal employee, applicant, or visitor. Pursuant to the NIH Reasonable Accommodation Policy, the Reasonable Accommodation Program (RAP) processes requests for accommodations intended to remove workplace barriers for employees, applicants, and visitors who have a disability to permit them to perform the essential functions of their position, apply for employment with NIH, and gain access to NIH’s benefits, facilities, and programs.Accommodating a non-existing workplace barrier:
The existence of a disability does not automatically entitle an employee to an accommodation. There must be a workplace barrier due to a disability or disabling medical condition. If an employee with a disability submits a request for an exception, modification, or change to an existing policy without identifying a workplace barrier, then the employee’s request is a preference and not a request for an accommodation. Each request must have a nexus to a workplace barrier that will remove the identified hindrance.
For additional information, please visit the FAQs page.
All employees, those with and without accommodation, are held to the SAME performance and conduct standards.
An approved accommodation cannot modify or remove a performance or conduct standard.
All accommodations, whether interim or final, are separate from performance.
An accommodation is a tool to remove a workplace barrier due to a disability or disabling medical condition; it is not a benefit of employment.
Removing an accommodation due to poor performance, that is not posing an undue hardship, opens the agency up to liability. (For assistance with an approved accommodation that is posing an undue hardship, please contact the NIH Reasonable Accommodation Program.)
Managers/supervisors should hold an employee with an approved accommodation accountable via accurate and consistent performance assessments.
A manager/supervisor should apply the same quantitative and qualitative measures of performance to an employee with an accommodation that it applies to an employee without an accommodation.
An employee with an accommodation must meet the same production standards, whether quantitative or qualitative, as an employee without an accommodation.
Lowering or changing a production standard due to an employee’s disability or disabling medical condition is not considered a reasonable accommodation. However, a reasonable accommodation may be required to remove the workplace barrier preventing the employee from meeting the production standard.
Example of lowering a production standard that is NOT a reasonable accommodation: Each writer must produce seven (7) articles a week. You approve, as an accommodation, an employee’s request to produce three (3) articles a week due to their typing limitation.
Example of removing a workplace barrier to help an employee meet a production standard: You approve an employee’s reasonable accommodation request for dictation software. With the removal of their typing limitation, they can now produce seven (7) articles a week and meet the production standard.
A manager/supervisor should evaluate the job performance of an employee with an accommodation the same way it evaluates an employee without an accommodation.
If a manager/supervisor gives a lower performance rating to an employee and the employee responds by revealing that they have a disability that is causing the performance problem, the manager/supervisor may still give the lower rating. The rating reflects the employee’s performance regardless of what role, if any, the disability may have played.