Key Terms and Definitions
Personnel Actions: Hiring, discharge, promotion, pay, benefits, reassignment, and other actions affecting the terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.
Qualified Individuals With a Disability: A person with a disability who has the basic qualifications and skills for the job he or she applied for or currently holds.
Other Kinds of Discrimination: The CAA prohibits actions that amount to de facto discrimination against a person with a disability. For example, using standards or criteria that have the effect of discrimination on the basis of disability, or using qualification standards or other selection criteria that tend to screen out an individual with a disability would be prohibited.
Disability: A physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.
Inquiries About Physical Abilities: Employing offices are not permitted to inquire about the existence, nature, or severity of a disability before a job offer is made to an applicant. Only inquires about the ability of an applicant to perform the functions of the job are permitted.
Conditioning a Job Offer on the Results of a Medical Examination: A job offer may be conditioned on the results of a medical examination conducted after the job offer is made only if all entering employees, regardless of disability, must take an examination. Information obtained from medical exams must be maintained separately as confidential medical records, with only limited job-related access allowed.
Reasonable Accommodation: A means of ensuring that a person with a disability, who is otherwise qualified for a position, can perform the essential functions of the job. Reasonable accommodations can include such steps as modifying equipment so that it can be used by someone with a physical impairment or providing an interpreter for a person who is deaf.
Known Physical or Mental Limitation: The requirement to accommodate an employee’s disability is only triggered when the employee makes known his or her disability to the employing office and requests an accommodation.
Undue Hardship: An action requiring significant difficulty or expense when weighed against other factors, such as an employing office’s size or financial resources.
Illegal Use of Drugs: Both the use of illegal drugs and the illegal use of legal prescription drugs.
