The email sat in drafts for three days before it was sent. “I need to request an accommodation for my ADHD.” Delete. Retype. “I wanted to discuss some workflow adjustments.” Delete. Retype. The difficulty wasn’t explaining the need. It was the vulnerability of asking at all.
Disclosure is one of the most fraught decisions disabled employees face. For business owners and managers, understanding why that decision feels so risky is essential to building truly accessible workplaces. Your accommodation process might look straightforward on paper. The human experience is considerably more complex.
Why disclosure feels risky
Many disabled people have learned through experience that disclosing brings consequences. Sometimes it’s overt discrimination. More often, it’s subtle shifts in how colleagues perceive competence. Once someone knows you’re disabled, every mistake gets attributed to your disability. Every success gets marked as surprising.
Research from the Job Accommodation Network found that while most accommodations cost nothing to implement, many employees still hesitate to request them due to fear of negative consequences. This isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition based on lived experience.
There’s also the exhaustion of explaining. Disability is deeply personal, yet requesting accommodations often requires detailed disclosure. You might need to share medical information with HR, explain your condition to your manager, and field questions from curious colleagues. For many people, this feels like surrendering privacy just to do their job.
Some disabilities are easier to disclose than others. Physical disabilities are often visible, which removes the disclosure choice but brings different challenges. Invisible disabilities like chronic pain, mental health conditions, or neurodivergence require active disclosure, and people fear seeming like they’re “playing the disability card” when convenient.
The accommodation request process
In Canada, employers have a legal duty to accommodate under human rights legislation, up to the point of undue hardship. That’s the legal framework. The practical experience varies wildly depending on workplace culture.
The formal process typically involves requesting an accommodation, providing documentation if needed, and working with your employer to implement solutions. Sounds simple. In practice, employees often encounter skepticism about whether they “really need” accommodations, delays that leave them struggling without support, or solutions that don’t actually address the barrier.
Good accommodation processes start with trust. When an employee requests an accommodation, the default response should be “What do you need?” not “Prove you need this.” While documentation might be necessary in some cases, many accommodations are straightforward enough that lengthy medical disclosure isn’t required. Someone requesting a standing desk or flexible hours shouldn’t need to provide their full medical history.
The best processes also recognize that accommodation needs might change. A chronic condition might flare up unpredictably. Mental health needs might shift with life circumstances. Effective accommodation isn’t a one-time checkbox. It’s an ongoing conversation.
Creating safety around disclosure
If you want employees to feel comfortable disclosing disability and requesting accommodations, you need to demonstrate through action that disclosure is safe. That means several things.
First, leadership needs to model openness. When leaders discuss their own disabilities or accommodation needs, it signals that disability isn’t shameful or career-limiting. This doesn’t mean demanding disclosure from leadership but creating space where people can choose to be open.
Second, accommodation processes need to be clearly communicated and consistently applied. Employees shouldn’t have to guess how to request accommodations or worry that asking will mark them as difficult. Make the process visible, straightforward, and genuinely accessible.
Third, address ableism when it appears. If someone makes dismissive comments about a colleague’s accommodations or questions whether someone is “really disabled,” that needs immediate correction. Silence communicates that those attitudes are acceptable.
Fourth, separate accommodation conversations from performance management. Requesting accommodations shouldn’t trigger concerns about someone’s capability. It should be treated as useful information about how to set someone up for success.
Beyond formal accommodations
Many accessibility needs don’t require formal accommodation processes. They’re simply good management practices that benefit everyone. Flexible work arrangements. Clear communication about expectations. Regular check-ins about workload and well-being. Meeting notes that capture key decisions. These practices support disabled employees while making work better for everyone.
Building this kind of flexibility into your default operations reduces the burden on disabled employees of constantly requesting exceptions. Instead of someone with chronic pain having to formally request permission to work from home during a flare-up, flexible work arrangements make that a normal option for everyone.
This approach, sometimes called universal design for the workplace, means thinking proactively about barriers rather than waiting for individuals to identify them. It doesn’t eliminate the need for individual accommodations, but it reduces how often people have to ask.
The manager’s role
If you manage people, you have an outsized influence on whether disclosure feels safe. Your response to accommodation requests sets the tone. Responding with genuine curiosity about how to support someone, rather than frustration about inconvenience, makes an enormous difference.
It also means protecting confidentiality. Information about someone’s disability or accommodations should be shared only on a need-to-know basis, with their consent. Casually mentioning someone’s disability to explain why they work differently violates trust and privacy.
Pay attention to your own biases. Are you genuinely treating accommodations as neutral adjustments, or do you mentally mark people who need them as higher maintenance? Are you making assumptions about what someone can or can’t do based on their disability? These internal biases leak into your behaviour even when you try to hide them.
So, what’s next?
Creating workplaces where disclosure feels safe isn’t about perfect policies. It’s about building trust through consistent, respectful action. It’s about recognizing that accommodation requests are information about how to work well together, not burdens to minimize. It’s about understanding that when employees hesitate to disclose, the problem isn’t their discomfort. It’s the environment that made disclosure risky in the first place.
For businesses working on accessibility, internal practices matter as much as customer-facing ones. You can’t build genuinely accessible products and services while maintaining workplaces where disabled employees hide their needs. Alignment between your internal culture and external commitments isn’t just good ethics. It’s how you build authentic expertise.