 And because there are a couple of people that I don't know yet, hello. I'm Mel Hauser, I use she, they pronouns, and I'm executive director here at AllBrain's Belong, Vermont. And I am very excited that you've all joined us here today for Brain Club where we're gonna be talking about communicating your access needs at work. And this is building on our whole month. This month has been about access needs. And before I introduce our presenter tonight, I'll first go through some introductions and ground rules of how we do things here at Brain Club and do a little bit of a recap on the conversations we've had thus far about access needs. So all forms of participation are okay here. You can have, the folks participating have already figured this out. You can have your video on or off. And even if you do have your video on, we do not expect by contact or any other kind of, any behavior confirming to any kind of code of there being one right way to be a person because that's not a thing. And in fact, that's bad for health. So you can do whatever needs doing, walk, move around, fidget, snack, take breaks. And as I was saying before, everyone's welcome here, kids and pets and anything goes. And you can communicate however is most comfortable to you. You can unmute and speak. You can type in the chat box, gesture, whatever works for you. And safety is really important to us here. So in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, we really want to respect and protect one another's access needs, speaking of access needs. And so what that also results in is that you are welcome to share anything you're comfortable talking about. But just keep in mind that if you are talking about something that you personally experienced as traumatic, it's just a good idea to let other people know about it first. So a content warning or trigger warning. This way, listeners can listen with informed consent versus choosing to do what they need to to feel safe. Whether that be leave the room for a few minutes or turn their sound off and then we'll always type in the chat box with content warning over. All right, last grounds keeping, that's not even a word, housekeeping is captions. I'm gonna turn it on. Oh, they're already on, they are now on. Great, so if you'd like access to closed captioning and they're not happening automatically or if they are happening automatically and you don't want them to, either click the live transcript CC icon or the more dot, dot, dot and choose either show subtitles or hide subtitles. So access needs, what's an access need? Anything required to meaningfully participate in one's environment or community. Everyone has access needs, everyone with all types of brains. And this can be physical, emotional, communication, technology, medical, like all types of access needs, we all have them. And when your access needs are not met in your environment, whether that be in healthcare or in education, in your employment setting, that's not good for health. That's not good for being able to be your best self. Cause what we don't want is we don't want a square peg in a round hole to have to like be chiseled away and changed to fit in this peg. So where that leaves us is that over the past month, we've been talking about, how do you communicate your access needs in relationships? How do you communicate your access needs in healthcare settings? And I am thrilled to welcome our guest presenter today, Tammy Naylor is a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid with the Disability Law Project. And Tammy's gonna be talking about the access needs at work situation and how to support conversations about these topics. Take it away, Tammy. Thank you so much. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna spend us a couple of minutes level setting about what the legal rights are that we're talking about. So that when we do move into sort of the broader conversation of access rights, we have a reference point for like, when is this access need a right? And when is it like my access need? Does that make sense? All right. So you should be seeing a little PowerPoint. Everybody see the PowerPoint? Great. So we're just gonna talk a little bit about employment and accommodations, a brief overview, where does the right to accommodations in your employment come from? Predominantly it comes from the Americans with Disabilities Act, title one of the Americans with Disabilities Act covers employment. It requires that no covered entity. So there are some employers that are excluded, mostly employers who have fewer than 15 employees. Shall discriminate against a qualified individual. We'll get to a qualified individual means on the basis of a disability in regard to job application procedures, the hiring advancement or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training and other terms, conditions and privileges of employment. And there are some of this also in the Vermont Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act, but a lot of when we were involved in this work we're using the ADA more. Okay, so what is disability? Everyone has their own definition for their needs. For some folks it's their identity and disability. For some folks it's identity and not disability. Right now we're just talking about like in the legal context how your needs show up and if you want to access the right to reasonable accommodation. So disability is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity of an individual. A record of having such an impairment or being regarded as having an impairment. So for example, someone is a wheelchair user and that person has some physical, actual like building physical access needs to be able to enter a building. They're not going to be someone who when the conversation of what are their access needs what accommodations do they need comes up in general if it's around physical accessibility they're not really going to be someone who's asked to then show additional medical evidence that they need that, right? Because it's very visible. For folks who have needs or disabilities that are invisible, they might be required to sow some sort of medical documentation or present a doctor's letter in support. So just keeping that in mind what is a qualified individual? That's an individual who, with or without reasonable accommodation can perform the essential functions of an employment position. So the essential functions of that position are determined by the employer. If you have a written job description that's usually pretty good evidence of what those essential functions are. So an individual who's seeking accommodations in the workplace, right? The right has to be able to do the job. If they can do it with accommodations, great. But if there's like an aspect of the job that someone's really unable to do that might not be a reasonable accommodation. So reasonable accommodations can include making existing facilities used by employees readily accessible. It can also include job restructuring, part-time or modified work schedules, reassignment to a vacant position. That's what a lot of folks sometimes refer to as like a right to transfer. Acquisition, so in that particular case that'd be for somebody who they've asked for an accommodation and the employer says that's a fundamental operation you're no longer performing the essential functions of the job. That's when some that might trigger some of the right to transfer. For example, if someone is diabetic and they were hired to work at the front desk in an emergency room, one of the job requirements might be that they need to be present at the desk at all times except for specifically assigned breaks. If somebody is severely diabetic they might need more flexibility in their day to be able to respond to their medical needs, what their blood sugar is doing. But that person not being available at the desk is a fundamental alteration of the essential functions of that particular hospital job. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're not otherwise qualified for another sort of front desk job in the hospital environment. Does that make sense? So again, that's where the right to transfer might come in. Acquisition or modifications of equipment and devices so assistive technology, things that can help appropriate adjustments or modifications or examinations in the context of a job that you might have to test into. Training materials or policies say someone needs in order to really be able to best learn, someone needs to have information presented to them in writing before it's then reviewed with them and then they're given a practice opportunity. That's what that could potentially look like. Provisions of qualified readers or interpreters, folks who have, who are deaf, hard of hearing and have some type of communication barrier are also entitled to effective communication. And so what that means can depend person to person, but for a really small company, if someone needs a full-time interpreter, we might be talking about a situation that is too costly for that organization. And other accommodations. So really an accommodation can be almost anything you need in order to better access your job so long as it is not a fundamental alteration or an undue burden. So fundamental alteration again means something about what you're asking for changes that position, that job. Undue burden means it's too much money, right? The nature and cost of the accommodation needed or it's too much to manage. You know, and that takes into account the overall financial resources of an employer and the type of organization that it is. And then I have a little flow chart here just to sort of try to sum up what the reasonable accommodation processes and in terms of title two. So person in order to qualify for an accommodation and under title two, they need to be asking for it. If an employer sees that someone might need an accommodation, they should be considering and working with that person but the law requires first the request. And then the person makes a request. Maybe they don't totally know or they know exactly what they need but their employer is saying, I don't know that we can manage that particular request. That triggers what we call an interactive dialogue. You're supposed to be able to have a conversation with the employer about what your needs are and what their needs are and really try to meet in the middle. And then either the accommodations put into place or the employer says this is really more than we can manage in these circumstances. For one of those two legal reasons, right? Fundamental alteration, undue burden, not doing the essential functions of the job. So that is, I'm gonna stop sharing now. That's just a little quick review of what the context of the law that we're talking about is. I am going to put, I lost my chat function. I'm gonna put in the chat because I made that into a handout for you. So I'm just gonna put that into the chat and then Dr. Hauser and I have some questions and I think we're gonna do a little bit of a Q&A, but not bad. And those questions are in this handout for folks. So when you see the handout, you should fingers crossed, hopefully, if I didn't mess something up, be able to make notes. Sorry, I should have practiced putting things in the chat. I really should have practiced putting things in the chat. It's totally fine. I think if you have the, if it's not working for whatever reason, if you email it to me, I can put it in the chat. Okay, hang on. I think I got it. Yeah, take it down. Sorry. No worries. Thought I was all prepared. It did take me six full minutes to share my screen a few minutes ago. Okay, there we go. It is sending. It's just a PDF. So hopefully I should be able to edit it in any way they need or print it off. Cool. It looks like it works. That's amazing. Yeah, okay. So you have all the legal information that I just reviewed. And then like I said, you'll have slides with the questions that Dr. Hauser and I are gonna talk about to show some guideposts in case you're keeping a record of this information for yourself. Amazing. So one of the things that comes up a lot for my patients is just like, what's your opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of disclosing a disability at work? Yeah, so I just wanna say as a little bit more preface, some of these conversations are, or some of these questions are legal questions and some of these are really impression, you know, what's the best practice question. I just wanna balance that. This is one of those questions that could go either way. So with that said, you know, it's hard and in some cases it's gonna come down to an individual decision. So there is a right to reasonable accommodations in employment and that right requires a person to first show and in some cases prove they have a disability, meaning not every person is entitled to accommodations in the workplace. So as much as I would like to see that everyone has their access needs met in the workplace, it's not an entitlement for everyone. And so, you know, some people have great super supportive employers who are just working with them and they like know them as a human and they're like, oh yeah, like we do this for example, I need a lot of exercise. My boss is super supportive of me working that into my day so long as it's not interfering with my workload. That's an access need of mine, but I'm not being reasonably accommodated in that way. I don't have a right to, you know, time in my day to get exercise in. So that's just, you know, an example of that distinction. So if you're someone and you'll need an accommodation to carry out the essential functions of your job, then you might be someone who wants to consider entering into or requesting a reasonable accommodation. So for example, let's go back to the example I gave about training. You're hired for a job and you know that you need training in a particular way. You need all of the information in written instruction first, then you need that reviewed with you and then you need a practice opportunity. If you don't request this training style as an accommodation that meets your learning needs, I making your learning needs known, the company is gonna train you however they do trainings. And if then you're not able to do the work you were trained for, you could face firing. So in this instance, someone could at the outset make a reasonable accommodation request to say, this is how I need information presented to me so that I can learn and so that I can perform my job. Someone might also say they've gone through the training. They knew maybe it wasn't the best fit for them but they were really, really hoping this time I didn't need to pre-teach, right? That person could make a reasonable accommodation request in that context, either for retraining or sort of like for a second chance, like I need this training again, I thought I would be able to access it. But one of the challenges then becomes if an employer has a discriminatory and a non-discriminatory reason for firing someone, they get to fire that person. So that's, and not that they get to fire that person, but if they, so sorry, I should have said that differently. If an employer has a discriminatory and a non-discriminatory reason for considering firing someone and they fire them, that firing is seen as non-discriminatory because they had a legitimate reason to fire them. So again, that person who has some specific learning needs and needs information presented to them in a particular way is entering into a new role where they're gonna need to be trained to do that. That person is probably gonna wanna consider disclosing their disability, requesting reasonable accommodations to set them up for success in that job. And then really, I think that the question of advantages and disadvantages, disclosing your disability at work, that's so personal. If you're somebody who doesn't have a need for reasonable accommodations, is it important to you that your colleagues or your supervisor know who you are or what you might be showing up with? And so I think it comes down to the question of, do I need reasonable accommodations in order to do this job, to perform the essential functions of this job? And if I don't, what is this environment and what's gonna be the safest for me personally? Do I need people to know who I am or this part of who I am? Or is it not something I wanna talk about? Any follow up questions to that one? Well, one of the things that we talk about a lot about sometimes is, is there a middle ground? Can you potentially get your access needs met without going down the legal entitlement track? Like maybe you, maybe I may not want to disclose that I'm autistic because there's something about the culture where I am that you don't want to do that for whatever reason, doesn't feel safe to me. But I might be like really bothered by the fluorescent lights. And as an accommodation, I might wanna wear my sunglasses when I'm in my office. So I might say like, oh, I have to kind of bring this like really bothered by the lights. Is it okay if I wear my sunglasses? And I just make it like not a big deal and I maybe get my access needs met. That access needs met. Yeah. I mean, I think that you're right that there is a middle ground. I mean, especially depending on where you are and what you're doing, but I think it's individual to every person and every job. Perhaps you work in some sort of packing or distribution center, turning the lights off is gonna be a safety concern. Or you're like me and you just work in an office and never even turning the lights on. Nobody cares that I'm sitting in the dark. So I think that there's always potential middle ground. I think I gave the example earlier of my job inherently, there is a requirement for what I have to do. And there's also some flexibility around how I get that done as far as time. So I have a basic requirement for the number of hours that I have to fulfill and the amount of work that I have to do in a pay period. And I have to be managing my cases. I have to be doing my workload. And there are some requirements for when I need to be in the office but to a certain extent, I am able to, I have the privilege of doing my work on when it suits me, when works for my schedule. And so we think that that is a frequently a privilege that comes from someone who has a more professional professional type job, every job can be a profession. But somebody who works in what we would more traditionally consider like a professional type circumstance. And so there's that privilege piece of it too. Totally. And even if someone works in an office setting, they may not be salaried. And so being salaried potentially affords some privilege and flexibility when many people in the ADV village, it's time. Time is the access need. And so how does that play out for someone who is an hourly employee, who needs more time to do the thing and can do the thing with more time? How, what are some ways that that might play out? Well, I think that that gets into a little bit more employment law than I'm particular with. So I just want to acknowledge that. So to my knowledge, most hourly employees who are employed on an hourly basis are what we call non-exempt employees, which means that if they exceed 40 hours of work, then they can get paid overtime. They have to get paid overtime. So if we have someone who has some time related needs and can still perform all the essential functions of that job within the 40 hours that they have available to them, then I think that that's generally something that could be accommodated, right? But if it's somebody who can't get all the tasks related to the job done, then we're entering into the essential functions, fundamental alteration territory. Now, if somebody needs an extra 10 hours to do whatever the job is, that's probably gonna be more of a fundamental alteration than somebody who needs an additional hour or half hour or 40 minutes in a time period or in a single week. And so I think that that's just really dependent on the individual circumstances, with every employment situation, the context that we're talking in, it's really such an individual in case-by-case analysis. But I think in that particular circumstance, again, depending on the culture, depending on what you're doing and who you're working with, like having a conversation, for somebody who's an hourly employee, maybe instead of a full half hour lunch break, they prefer to take 10 minute breaks every two hours or something like that. That's pretty reasonable. That's an easy, I would hope that that would be an easy conversation to have. Maybe not every employer is able to do that because you're the only person present and available until your lunch break. But again, I think it's so case-by-case and you're right, there is a lot of privilege associated with being a salaried employee, which I think is, this is one of the places where the law and accessing that right to a reasonable accommodation and having that interactive dialogue can, in fact, be really supportive for someone. Then you have, even if that particular employer happens to not be supportive, then at least you have a means to say, I requested a reasonable accommodation, not only did you deny my reasonable accommodation, but then you fired me or you acted out against me because of what I requested. And there's some teeth, so to say. That's super helpful. And by the way, if anyone has questions, feel free to, now I'm not in sheer screen mode, so I can actually see you if you raise your hand or feel free to type in the chat. And as you're thinking of your questions, Kali, I'm gonna combine my next couple of questions that we've talked about ahead of time. So do you have thoughts on when the best time, if you've decided to go ahead and disclose a disability, what are your thoughts on when is the time to do it? Should you do it at the application process? Should you do it during the interview? Should you do it beside before you, during your onboarding, or how does that play out? That turns up a lot in our health care practice. I bet it's such a tricky question. So this is one of those questions that is likely not a legal question. And so my answer, like any good lawyer, is going to be it depends. And it depends on every person's individual needs, right? And I talked about this a little bit. And the last question is your disability and aspect of your identity, and you just can't, you can't serve, or are your access needs, or if you're autistic, do you, is that a part of your identity? Do you need people to know I'm autistic? You just can't survive in a workplace where people don't understand that. You might want to disclose that. That might actually be a part of your interview process or on your application. This is a part of who I am. Now in the legal context, to the best of someone's ability, if they have concerns that without reasonable accommodations, they cannot perform the fundamental or the essential functions of their job, that person should require, should consider requesting reasonable accommodations, disclosing their disability before they have a problem. Right? Because what I said earlier is true when an employer has a discriminatory and a non-discriminatory reason to fire someone, that firing as seen as non-discriminatory. So a person needs to be thinking about what is this job? What are my access needs? Are there aspects of what's being asked of me in this job that without accommodation or support, I can't do or I can't do in the way that they're asking me to? And if the answer to that question is yes, then that person might be someone who is in need of some reasonable accommodations. And again, I think one thing that's important is that reasonable accommodations, they don't have to be something that exists for the rest of your working career. So I'm gonna use myself as an example again. After I had my son, I had really bad postpartum anxiety. To tell you the truth, I had no idea what was going on. What I knew was working 45 minutes from where my son was in daycare was physically painful. And I was not managing it well. Every moment I wasn't buried in my work, I was worried about what he was doing and how long it would take me to get back to him if something went wrong. I said to my boss, I'm distracted. I'm struggling. I'm doing my work fine. I'm keeping up on my work fine, but I'm not really well in the process. Can I do X so that two days a week? I think I asked, can I work somewhere different two or three days a week so that it minimizes that stress? And we worked that situation out. The pandemic happened like two weeks later. There wasn't a whole lot that needed to be done because then I was with him all the time. But in that conversation, I didn't disclose that I had postpartum anxiety. Frankly, I didn't even understand that I had postpartum anxiety at the time. What I did understand was that something was going on that made me physically uncomfortable, physically and emotionally, just uncomfortable, unable to show up to the best of my abilities. I was still showing up. But I didn't have a diagnosis and even just that conversation triggered the reasonable accommodation process. Now I work for a legal aid, right? So we arguably know a little bit more about what we're doing, but that is to say that someone doesn't necessarily need to disclose all of their disability to say, I'm experiencing something, a physical or mental condition that's impacting my ability to perform the essential functions of my job. Here's what's going on. I need support. So, you know, disclose when it's right for you unless you think that you do need to access those Title II of the ADA rights to reasonable accommodation. And remember that in requesting a reasonable accommodation, even if full disclosure of what your needs are is too much, you can try first to say, here's what's going on and here's something I think might help. Your employer can say, I need some evidence. And that's when you might think about getting a doctor's note. But you have, there is that little bit of ability for ambiguity too. Yeah, and I think that's a lot of times people don't necessarily have ideas for what would help. And, you know, they might ask their doctor and sometimes their doctor knows, like this is what we do all day, but that's not everyone's focus of their practice. But like, are there any, and this again is not necessarily a legal question, but just like in the course of supporting folks with disabilities, like do you have thoughts about, like first off, how do you have those conversations? Like maybe some scripts or some language to use in those conversations and like how to even begin the process of thinking what to ask for. So legally, there's no magic words and we frequently find that it is very important for someone to say, this is what's going on and I need a reasonable accommodation. And that is to say, like again, the law requires no magic words, but it's very helpful to use magic words from time to time. And I actually have a colleague who has a really great script and I'm not that person. But so it is, it is, you know, it depends on sort of who you're working with or what's going on, but it is this is my disability. I need reasonable accommodations. This is what I'm struggling with. I am, you know, in this case, I'm assuming someone's working with like a physician or voc rehab or higher ability, excuse me. I'm working with higher ability. They're helping me figure out what accommodations I need to be successful with these problems that I'm having. I haven't quite put those pieces together, but higher ability is helping me for that. So I need a reasonable accommodation of a little bit more time and a heads up of what might not be going right so that I can go back to higher ability and they can help me so that I can come and continue to be successful. And often, you know, I will say there have been, I've had a couple cases for young men or young people on the autism spectrum who are either post high school or post college entering their first job and they're connected with higher ability and they still really struggle. And a lot of them, the handful of the cases that I've had, they end up being fired from their first job because they have said, like, I need help, but I don't know what or, you know, well, this was really helpful to me in the past, but they haven't said, I need a reasonable accommodation for my disability. I'm working with this organization. They're trying to help me figure that out. I'm working really hard. I need a little, I need more time. And then whatever accommodation we figure out, I'm gonna need that too, but they're gonna help me with asking for that room. They might even help me with setting that up, right? So if someone's hooked up with Vocrehab or connected with higher ability, they might have some funding to support whatever accommodation that that person needs to. So, you know, there are outside organizations that can really help in this process. And what I can do, my colleague is on a very well-deserved vacation right now, but when she gets back, I will, I'll check in with her and I'll get her to write down what her script is because it's, I think my example is good, but it's far better, I promise, than the example that I just gave, and I'll send that to you, okay? So that you can like have that as a resource. We can, right? Because like so many people are having, having these conversations and really struggling and not being, not receiving the responses necessarily that they're looking for. And that's so demoralizing. So, so hard if you are in a circumstance and you're saying that, you know, this really worked for me in the past and then that employer maybe isn't the most thoughtful or sensitive person or, you know, is very good at personing. And they like, they, they like laugh and they're like, well, if you need a support person, why wouldn't I just hire that person to do the job? Like that, that happens to people. So I, and by the way, for anyone who has a question. So, so we've got about a little bit over 15 minutes to go. So if anybody has questions, please raise your hand or type them in the chat. Otherwise I can give you questions all day. But I think you and I have no lack of anything to talk about. Yeah, like I don't have time yet. Yeah. Yeah. I worked, I'll go ahead, Laura, go ahead. I just, Kami, this has been really, really helpful. I'm sorry, there's a lot of noise in the background here, but I teach nursing students and a lot of our nursing students have accommodations during their education. And I'm just thinking like, a lot of this information would be so helpful to have students here as they're trying to enter the workforce and trying to figure out like what that looks like, especially in a clinical setting where I think a lot of employers don't really think outside of the box about what are essential components of the job and what can be reasonably accommodated. And I kind of just want to connect with you and see if it's something we could even run as a session for our nursing students who have this on their mind and they're trying to think about what their next steps might be. I feel like this is just really helpful. I'll pop my email address in the chat. Definitely reach out to me. I really like, it's one of the great joys of my job in addition to just helping incredible people, but I really like doing trainings and talking to people. It's a part of my job I really like. Well, I have more questions for you. Good thing you love it. So I can't go into detail. This is a process not related to my current job. It appears that I'm currently being ghosted after asking for reasonable accommodations for a process well known for accommodations. I've worked hard for this thing and being ghosted feels like it can be a level of discrimination or barring me from something moving my life forward in a major way versus others going after this. I'm not a legal retaliation type of person, but can I do anything? It seems like this is a particular type of situation. I think what I would encourage you to do is if you think that you've been discriminated against because of a disability related reason for asking for the accommodation and sort of this is your circumstance, I would encourage you to contact our helpline, complete an intake. We're taking about 14 days to get back to people right now, but once we get you through intake, you will likely be connected with an attorney and you can have that confidential conversation about what's been going on to explore your individual. Opportunities in general, if someone is concerned that they've been discriminated against in some sort of government or educational type, we're talking like post high school, post sort of like mandatory process. I would tend to consider that something that if the person was interested in complaining about that and by complaining about that, I mean filing something, having someone else look into it, that's usually something I would send to the Human Rights Commission, the Vermont Human Rights Commission. If somebody has had an employment matter that they believe that they were discriminated against, that's really a little bit more tricky and kind of nuanced in the sense that it comes down in some cases to whether you want the job back or not, or if you're still in the job, how much work you want to do to preserve that job itself. So in that circumstance, the Civil Rights Office for the Vermont Attorney Generals has a complaint process, an employment complaint process. Their investigations do take some time, but that is the really great investigatory entity that we frequently are sending people with concerns of employment discrimination to. And then again, like I said, so it concerns of discrimination in places of public accommodation or, so anything like really under like Title II or Title III of the ADA. So places of public accommodation or like local vendors, local businesses, that would be something I would encourage somebody to look into the HRC. But if you have some particular questions and want to like share a little bit more about what your story is, to get more personalized recommendations or some technical assistance, perhaps, I would encourage you to contact our helpline or to contact the HRC directly and have that conversation with them, that call would also be confidential. I appreciate that, thank you. I can't really do much detail. It sounds like whatever you're going through is really hard and really painful and leaving you kind of in a stalled place. And I'm really sorry for that. Yeah, it just seems like, for me, like a simple ask, like I can't do this thing. This is why, you know what I mean? Using all this assertive language, it seems clear. And what was I gonna say? Some people, it's like, you know, you can get through them pretty easily, but from others, it's surprising when it's like to level where it's like, this is mind blowing, this simple thing that I cannot do that takes 10 minutes. I get ghosted and a week goes by and I, you know, really, really hard throughout this process that I'm doing. And, you know, other people may not be neurodivergent that are going up against me. And I feel like I've worked the hardest for this thing. And that, you know, I may not get it if they're just literally ghosting me. I put the word, I have an accommodations letter from a doctor. I said, if necessary, I explained very professionally and concisely, but it's just surprising. It's just surprising that it's like an access need isn't just like, that seems so simple. That's not a big deal. It's just, you never know when you get reach a person where it's like the level where this is like blows their world away or something and it seems so simple to you, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's so unfair. I'm so sorry. I think that that is one of sort of the ongoing challenges right is in order to have a person's needs met and protected under the law, that person has to be prepared to like disclose all of those needs and a lot of their medical information. You know, we would all like to live in a society where people's needs are just met. We're not there yet. I'm so sorry. If you, you know, the HRC might be a good place for you depending on what it is. And if you wanna go through our intake process and potentially talk to one of us, that's available to you as well. I hope it doesn't come down to that. I mean, at this point, I mean, honestly, this thing, I will, in 14 days I would definitely lose it. Yeah. But we do do do some triage. And so if it is a time sensitive thing, you know, there is a way to flag that. Dr. Hauser also has not that she needs more work, but she has our community partners portal information which can sometimes expedite referrals if that's available to you. But, you know, I don't know what the wait time is for the HRC, but they're also very, very good. Yeah, I appreciate that your process that you have and it's extremely good advice. And I think it's a very good process, so thank you. Yeah, definitely. Anyone else have any questions? Feel free to unmute, feel free to type in the chat box. Otherwise, as I said, I have so many questions, but I'm gonna pause and give you all space. And because I don't feel time, I always try to, I try to wait longer than I think I've waited even though I feel like I've waited like, you know, I know it hasn't been five minutes, but it probably has not even been one minute. So anyway, okay. So, you know, you mentioned, Cammy, when you said public accommodations, that just made, this isn't exactly what you were talking about, but most of you who know me or have been to other brain clubs know that I can't actually finish a conversation without talking about COVID. So how does that play out? Like people who their, the reasonable accommodation that they may be requesting at their workplace is like relates to COVID and their risk of getting COVID and not wanting to get COVID particularly because the neurodivergent community is at higher risk of complications from COVID. So much like these conversations are being had, you know, by families, about their kids, students accessing school, has this plan at work? I have not seen this come up actually. I haven't had any cases on this topic since the beginning of the pandemic. So I'll just say that and in the cases those particular cases that I had, they were not favorable to the individual who was seeking my advice. Those cases, the handful that I did have came down to needing accommodations to not mask. You know, I think, you know, at that time, right? Depending on what your needs are in your work environment, you may be entitled to reasonable accommodations. I don't, you know, those could look like just like what they look like for kiddos at school. So I'm masking, masking in common places. You know, I think, Mal, we were just at that talk last week where was he an aerosol mechanic? He was a fluid mechanic, yeah, like a fluid mechanic scientist. So a gentleman who is a professional at, I think, UVM specializes in aerosols and what he shared with this group of people who we were talking to about protecting kids in schools is that in addition to a well-fitting mask, what's actually in his mind, in his opinion, and the information that he shared potentially more effective is air filtration, you know? And so I don't know, you know, if somebody's in a cubicle or an office and they wanna bring in their own air purifier, that's not even something that you have to ask for. You know, I think it does become more complicated for someone who's, say, a teacher. But we've not had those calls yet. And so I don't know, but I would encourage that person to engage in the reasonable accommodation process with their administration. That is what's available in these circumstances. And again, I think in these COVID-related cases, Dr. Houser has hurt me say this so many times, it was probably painful at this point, but the quality of your medical evidence is one of the most important factors in determining the outcome of your accommodation request. And that is that it is the request is directly linked to the current medical science, whatever the request is, is really tailored, really specific, frankly, as individualized as possible. And, you know, how some sort of built-in review period. But then, you know, everyone should be following the CDC's recommendations as well, which I know are not, Dr. Houser can tell us more about those. I think that we're gonna have to have, like we've never had like a dedicated COVID, you know, I think you can just like a long COVID really brain club, I think that'd be useful, good. Anyway, probably time for one more question, if anybody has any more questions. Yes, long COVID brain club. All right, some other human wants me to do it. It's all I wanna talk about all day. So we'll do it, Becky. Hi, this is Christina speaking for COVID. I'm actually dealing with that right now, but yeah, this is crazy, my first time. But, and I work from home, but my question was more as I like reviewed your slides and your content and stuff like that, Cami, it sounds like if you aren't going into a job with the onset of like knowing that you need reasonable accommodations, discovering it in the interim, if you have kind of like a workplace that might not be super flexible, or it doesn't sound like you have a whole lot of protections. I don't know, it just seems like the language is pretty vague and there's a lot of loopholes there for companies to kind of skirt out of this. It just kind of doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence in disclosing anything, just to be honest, I don't know. Does this usually fall to the benefit of the employer when an employee kind of pursues this route of getting accommodations? Hmm, okay. So you asked the question, does it fall to the benefit of the employer when an employee? And they don't have a clear like record of like they just discovered this is not working for me. Yeah, so I understand that, but there was something about what I was hearing initially. And so, but I can't form sort of what the question I was hearing was and I apologize. It's late. So, you know, most employment, most places of employment have some sort of review process. There is in most employment type situations there's some sort of feedback process. Now, if you're struggling in a job, you're a person with a disability and you've never gotten feedback that you're not doing well, you don't know, right? You don't know. And so, it can be employer favorable and it depends, every single case depends on the individual facts and circumstances. And I just wanna say like you said that the law that I have presented in this presentation looks very vague and has a lot of loopholes. I was trying to present the most like boiled down vocabulary really to just provide like a primer so that we just had a sort of a shared understanding of some of what the law is and some of what the process is. So, you should know that a lot of the language I used comes from Title II of the ADA, the act itself. There are also regulations implementing Title II of the ADA. They are, or Title I and Title II and Title III of the ADA, right? They are far more broad. So, I don't wanna say, I'm not comfortable saying that it's employer focused or employer favorable because like I said, every case depends on the individual facts and circumstances. However, if somebody's in a job, they've received negative performance reviews. They're trying to do better. They're sort of working on the outsides to do better, but based on the feedback in that performance review, but they're not requesting accommodations or they're not having that conversation with their employer, I see that I am having trouble in these areas. I have a disability. I believe my disability is impacting my performance in these areas. I'm trying to figure out what's gonna help me be able to meet this demand, right? Cause it's essentially a demand. If you don't have that conversation, you have no protections. If you do have that conversation, if you are trying in that process, then you have some protections. Now, if it goes on and on and you're not making improvements based on a performance evaluation, they're saying I need reasonable accommodations, but I don't know what they are. You're not having an interactive dialogue with your employer and you're not improving, not coming up with anything. That's a very different case than say you have that conversation with your employer. You say, oh my gosh, I'm horrified by this performance evaluation. I'm actually really crestfallen by this. I thought I was doing really well. I see these areas where you've identified that I'm struggling. I actually think that these are disability related. I'm working with a physician. I'm working with a therapist. I'm gonna come to you next week with some ideas for what types of reasonable accommodations might allow me to perform better in these areas. And I hope that we can have that conversation. That person who comes back and says, okay, I'm ready to have the conversation. I still don't have any ideas, but like my doctor said this and that can trigger the interactive dialogue and you and your employer can brainstorm and they can say, you know, based on what you're telling us, we did this with another employee. Let's try that. That person's gonna have a lot more protections. So there is an aspect of disclose to protect yourself if that's necessary. But then there are gonna be some employers where you don't get performance evaluations. They're like, we've had you for four months, you're not up to the job, we're firing you. Someone may or may not know. So in that particular situation, there's probably not gonna be a whole lot that that person can do. So I can go a number of different ways. And I would like to remind you that the law that I presented in this presentation is intentionally vague just to kind of ground us in some vocabulary. But the better that you're communicating with your employer, depending on how supportive of an employer you have, the stronger the legal analysis in your case goes. So even if you have a super unsupported employer, day one, you say in the interview process, I have a disability. So they already know. They don't, you don't have any conversation about accommodations, I have a disability. They hire you, you say, I need some pre-teaching and training and I need a little extra help. They don't get that to you. At this point, you still, they know that you have a disability. You still haven't said I need reasonable accommodations. Then you have some trouble and you say, I need, I'm working with my physician and my therapist, you know, my vocational counselor, hireability, could you, can we set up a meeting with them? They don't do anything. That's somebody who may have a pretty strong case or maybe not a discriminatory firing, but perhaps disparate treatment in the work environment. Like there's, so not reasonably accommodating somebody is not the only way to discriminate again somebody in the workplace also. It's hard to say, right? We're talking in ambiguities and we're talking about, ambiguities and imagined, not imagined but not the most tangible circumstances. It's case by case and it's a fact-based analysis. Right, and a lot of topics we discuss in Brain Club all come down to communication and the safety that someone feels in their environment interpersonally, like interpersonal safety. And when we think about the double empathy problem where it's not like there's a correct way of communicating and then like an abnormal way of communicating, it's that when people have a mismatch of world views and communication styles, there is conflict and there's a lot of misunderstandings. And what I see in my practice is that people who have conflicting access needs with their employer already, there's already that loss of safety and then it becomes this very antagonistic and like legalistic thing that goes on where that situation was never gonna work out. And it's sad and it's, but it's not gonna work out even if everyone gets the particular thing that, oh yeah, well, I'll grant you those, but it's not like the only time that I have had this personal experience was in requesting, I didn't even use the reasonable accommodations language, but that was essentially the conversation, but again, I didn't use the magic words maybe, but the particular response already gave me the clue that this was not gonna work out. And so I didn't spend my spins, I plotted my exit plan. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's so, it's so, this is not like my advice, it's just a human being or me talking, but it's so important to the best of a person's ability to try to be working to finding that work environment that's a good fit for them. That is a huge piece of it, just for everyone at a basic level, like can I work here, can I work with these people? Can I be myself or can I be whomever my professional self is? You know, am I safe? Can I walk into the building and feel self-assured? Like that, I think that that's also a very privileged position to take or series of things to consider in terms of like, I need a job, I need employment, I need income, you know, and that's also just not a luxury that everyone has. And there are lots of people who are tolerating workplaces that feel really toxic to them or feel really uncomfortable to them out of sheer necessity to pay rent and put food on the table. So I think just like acknowledging that privilege piece of it's really important. But if you have the ability to be shopping for an employment environment that meets your needs or is suitable to you for who you are as a person or what your access needs are, yeah, do that. When you go in for an interview, like you're interviewing that employer just as much as they're interviewing you. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Cammy, for your time and sharing your expertise with us. This was really, really wonderful. And when I send out the recording, I'll also send out those slides, but if anyone hasn't had a chance to grab them out of the chat. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you all. Thank you, Malpher, for having me. It's always so great to see you. It's always so great to see you. And next week, everyone, we've got I think a really important, another really important brain club, talking about bullying. And though some of our community panelists are gonna be talking about bullying within the school system and doing some community problem solving around that. I mean, this really will apply to all domains of life when people are not being treated in a way that allows them to feel safe. And when we think about equity and inclusion, who gets to show up? Who gets to feel like they belong? Like this safety is a prerequisite for both of those things. So we hope it's a safety. Just so you know, we do a representation for youth who are buying haste or harassed based on disability. I did not know that. That's a part of what we do. So if you have any clients or patients who are in need of some legal advice, you know, feel free to refer those over if you think it's appropriate and if they want that. Thank you, bye everybody.