Delaware Disability Discrimination Laws

Qualified employees and applicants with disabilities can request reasonable accommodations in a good-faith effort to seek an employment opportunity. As part of this request, they must:

• inform employers of their disabilities;
• submit any necessary medical documentation;
• suggest possible accommodations that are known to them; and
• cooperate in any subsequent discussions and evaluations to determine possible or feasible accommodations.

After this request is made, or when potential accommodations are obvious under the circumstances, employers must investigate whether reasonable accommodations can be made. Employees and applicants can be required to accept the employment opportunity in writing as a condition for initiating this investigation, if requested in writing by employers.

Reasonable accommodations are reasonable workplace changes that would accommodate employees’ and applicants’ known disabilities by enabling them to satisfactorily perform their essential job duties. Reasonable accommodations can include making facilities accessible, modifying equipment, providing mechanical aids to assist with operating equipment, and making reasonable changes to schedules or job duties.

Unless otherwise provided by applicable laws, employers aren’t required to:

• provide accommodations of a personal nature, such as eyeglasses, hearing aids, or prostheses, except under the same terms and conditions that such items generally are provided to employees;
• reassign employees’ job duties without assigning them new job duties to compensate for those that were reassigned;
• reassign employees’ job duties if this reassignment would significantly increase the skill, effort, or responsibility requirements for other employees;
• make accommodations for a new employee where the cost would exceed 5 percent of the employee’s annual salary or annualized hourly wage;
• make accommodations for an existing employee where the cost would put total accommodation costs for the employee, since initial acceptance of employment, at more than 5 percent of the employee’s current salary or annualized hourly wage; or
• make changes that would impose undue hardship on employers (accommodation costs that don’t exceed the above 5 percent thresholds are presumed not to cause undue hardship).

Del. Code Ann. tit. 19, §§ 722 to 723

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Under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers, including state and local governments, with 15 or more employees, are prohibited from discriminating against people with disabilities. Title I protects qualified individuals with disabilities in several areas, including job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation and job training. It is also unlawful to retaliate against someone for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on disability, or for filing an ADA discrimination charge. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) shares enforcement authority for Title I of the ADA with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which has primary responsibility for enforcing the employment provisions of the law. (Note: Federal employees and job applicants are covered by Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 instead of the ADA.