Employment

DRAZ’s Civil Rights Team

DRAZ advocates for people with disabilities who face employment discrimination in hiring and during employment. One of the biggest barriers to finding and keeping a job is when employers fail to provide reasonable accommodations to job applicants and employees or provide accommodations that are not effective. Many times, employers do not listen to their employees with disabilities who understand best what they need to do the job. Another obstacle is when employers use hiring selection methods that screen out people with disabilities, including online applications and employment tests that stop when a specific response is received. For example, if an automated system asks “can you stand for 4 hours at a time” and an applicant in a wheelchair responds “no” the automated system ends. There, the employer screened out a potentially qualified individual with a disability who could do the job with an accommodation. DRAZ wants to help you confront and eliminate barriers keeping you from working to your potential. 

DRAZ’s Civil Rights Team addresses employment discrimination based on disability by providing direct client services, technical assistance and self-advocacy tools, consultations, outreach and training in the community on employment rights, and systemic work focused on the rights of applicants and employees with disabilities based on our focus areas and resources.

Here are some examples of how DRAZ may provide direct services to people with disabilities facing employment discrimination:

• Negotiate with an employer to provide reasonable accommodations for an employee on a performance improvement plan.   
• Draft a reasonable accommodation request for an employee who wishes to bring their service animal to work. 
• File an ADA employment charge against a temporary employment agency that refused to send a temporary employee for assignments because she was still undergoing treatment. 
• Represent an employee at mediation who was denied sign language interpreters during meetings, performance reviews, training, and in safety evacuation planning.
• Represent an employee with an Intellectual/Developmental Disability during the EEOC’s investigation about her employer’s refusal to hire her because she has a job coach.        

DRAZ’s Civil Rights Team also advocates for people to be treated fairly when they file employment charges and for systemic changes, such as training and policy changes.