Policy Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Policy Paper - Essay Example People can be born with deformities in their physical appearance or have some of their faculties diminished or missing. Features of such disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing and deformed limbs and diminished mental ability. Accidents also contribute immensely in disabling people especially work place accidents where accidents are caused in the use of machinery and equipment. Whatever the cause of disability, the different conditions that people find themselves in predispose them to discrimination in the workplace. This led to the need for a way to protect these people’s rights in society and in the workplace. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is seen as the first major legislation that addressed the needs and rights of people with disabilities in its Title VII article. The articles of Title VII address the plight of all people in the employment sector, and it emphasizes the need for equal treatment of persons with disabilities. This act led to the formulation of other laws and institutions that safeguard the rights of individuals in the employment sector. ... The law requires that employers provide appropriate and reasonable accommodation to a job applicant with disability as long as doing so does not cause significant expense or difficulty to the employer. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination of job applicants in all aspects of employment that includes firing, hiring, job assignment and other conditions and terms of employment. The law makes it illegal to harass a job applicant because he/she has a disability or has relations with a disabled individual. Harassment does not entail physical abuse, but also offensive remarks that are severe leading to a hostile work environment. When verbal harassment results, in adverse employment decisions, it disposes the harasser to prosecution under the law (Rothstein and Liebman 56). The requirement by law that employers provide reasonable accommodation to disabled job applicants entails changing the work environment to enable the disabled individual competently carry out their dut ies. These accommodations include building access ramps for wheel chairs and providing interpreting equipment for those with sight and hearing disabilities. This provision in law also provides protection for employers in the sense that the employer is not forced to incur huge expenses while providing these accommodations.This falls under the undue hardship provision that states that an employer does not have to provide accommodation to a disabled job applicant if doing so would cause undue hardship to the employer (Rothstein and Liebman 34). Undue hardship occurs if providing these accommodations proves to be too expensive or difficult in light of the employer’s size, the needs of the business and their financial resources. The