Questions and Answers about Deafness and Hearing Impairments in the Workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act

13.  May an employer be required to provide more than one accommodation for the same employee with a hearing disability?

Yes. The duty to provide a reasonable accommodation is an ongoing one. Although some employees with hearing disabilities may require only one reasonable accommodation, others may need more than one. An employer must consider each request for a reasonable accommodation and determine whether it would be effective and whether providing it would pose an undue hardship.

Example 20: A deaf employee can communicate effectively with her supervisor by lip-reading and with written notes. The employee wants to attend a three-day training program that will involve extensive communication between participants and the instructor and among participants themselves. The employee requests CART - communication access real-time translation - for the training. The employer may explore whether another form of reasonable accommodation - for example, a sign language interpreter - would be effective. But, the employer must provide the CART service or another effective form of reasonable accommodation, absent undue hardship, since lip-reading and exchanging occasional notes will not enable the employee to participate fully in the training.