Now under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination which goes a little bit further than the Americans with Disabilities Act workers have the right to be accommodated if they have a temporary disability or handicap in the workplace.

So if it’s reasonable for your employer to do it, your employer has an obligation to make accommodations for you that allow you to be fully productive.  If for example you are a typist and you know heavens for fend you get into a car accident and you lose one of your fingers.  And your rate of speed slows down a little bit; if there’s other ways you can make up your productivity your employer has to let you do that.

On the other hand if your disability or handicap is so extensive and so unfortunate that there’s no reasonable way your employer can accommodate you then of course you don’t have that right.  But what’s important is, is that if you feel that you need an accommodation in order to invoke protection all you have to do is ask.  The employer has an obligation to go into a dialogue with you to ask for information from you, even from your doctors to evaluate whether or not there’s a reasonable accommodation that it can offer you.

You don’t have to come up with the accommodation, nor does your doctor.  Your employer has to think it through.  If the employer fails to do this, or if the employer resents it and retaliates against you for asking then it’s very clearly violated our New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.