The Americans with Disabilities Act: A Brief Primer on the ADA
Like Canada, the United States has federal legislation protecting employees with disabilities. While Canada has the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act, the United States has the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). While both Canadian and U.S. laws protect disabled employees from discrimination, the ADA has very specific procedures and requirements for accommodating employees with disabilities that even sophisticated U.S. employers frequently get wrong. Below is a discussion of several key concepts under the ADA that employers in the United States should know about. An employer has a duty to provide an employee with a “disability” with “reasonable accommodations” that will allow the employee to perform the “essential...
