Reasonable Accommodation" Introduction for Occupational Therapists
Occupational therapists are crucial in work capacity evaluation, helping clients with disabilities return to work and/or establish themselves in competitive employment. This video describes the five-level Employability Rating Scale (ERS) based on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Employers, rehabilitation professionals, and persons with disability and their families use the ERS to guide vocational planning.
In addition to working as consultants to employers on reasonable accommodation, OT's can provide guidance to parents of children with disabilities, adults returning to the labor market, long-term disability insurance carriers, and both plaintiff and defense attorneys on facilitating labor market entry through an understanding of the five levels of employability and how the ADA addresses each level.
For OT's who are experienced with work rehabilitation, this is an excellent area to consider developing a secondary career as a business consultant or forensic consultant focused on ADA Reasonable Accommodation.
Dr. Leonard Matheson introduces the ADA Employability Rating Scale (ERS) and interviews ADA Coordinator Roy Matheson about key aspects of the ERS. Roy addresses the importance of occupational therapists in the reasonable accommodation process, especially in situations that he describes as "sticky" for employers. Occupational therapists can help employers avoid running afoul of EEOC complaints and judgments by consulting to apply the Title I ADA standards.
The video concludes by presenting the grading scale developed for the Dynamic Complex Assembly Task (DCAT) developed by Dr. Matheson based on work from his lab at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Program in Occupational Therapy. The DCAT provides an objective performance-based measure of employability that can be administered in an office or clinical setting to guide labor market entry, bridging from the clinic to the workplace through the use of the ERS.