7 - Reasonable Accommodations in a Psychosocial Diverse Workplace

Summary

When workplaces are designed and managed for a worker with a 'normal' range of abilities, then workers with different abilities are disabled at work. Human rights and anti-discrimination laws create duties upon employers and others to adjust workplaces to accommodate workers with disabilities. This chapter argues that reasonable accommodation and adjustment laws privilege workers with physical and sensory impairments compared to workers who have psychosocial disabilities. Workers with invisible psychosocial disabilities are victimised if they disclose their disability and the law is comparatively less likely to recognise the request of a worker with a psychosocial disability as reasonable. The failure by law and work practices to address ableism at work perpetuates a hierarchy of impairments, which leaves workers with psychosocial disabilities unable to exercise their right to work on an equal basis as workers without disabilities, or with less stigmatised impairments.