Diversity Activity - ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and Reasonable Accommodations
Preclass Instructions
Gather about 20 current company job descriptions. The job descriptions must be in different functions and at different levels of the organization. Each job description needs to go on a separate sheet of paper. These should come from a wide variety of company positions, such as management, physical work, knowledge workers, etc. For example, do NOT make all of them entry level, non-professional jobs as it sends the wrong message.
Next, write a disability on a separate sheet of paper. Create as many disabilities as there are job descriptions. NOTE: The disabilities do not have to be all different, you can have 3 or 4 hearing impaired, 5 or 6 sight impaired, etc.
Classroom Instructions:
- Divide the class into small groups - about 4 learners to a group.
- Randomly issue (e.g. drawing out of a hat) each group a job description.
- Next, randomly issue each group a disability.
- The task is to come up with reasonable accommodations for a person with that disability in that job. For example, if the job description is for a Plant Manager and the assigned disability is blindness, then the group needs to determine how they would accommodate a blind Plant Manager.
- If there are only a couple of small groups, have each group perform 2 or 3 sets of the same activity (issue them different job description with different disabilities).
- After the small groups have worked the activity for about 15 minutes, bring the groups together and have each group present their findings.