If Your Disability Isn’t Easy To See, You Still Have Rights

The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t just cover people with visible physical disabilities. It also offers rights to those with disabilities that aren’t immediately easy to discern. This includes those related to mental illness, chronic pain, and addiction.

Non-apparent disabilities are perhaps the most common kind of disabilities. Approximately one in five individuals has a disability of some kind—and most of the time, you would not know unless the person told you.

Your Rights Under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)

Your employer is required to provide a reasonable workplace accommodation for you, as long as it doesn’t present an undue burden to them. The accommodation can be anything as long as it works for both employer and employee.

The ADA defines a disability as any health condition that considerably limits one or more major life activities. Those with addiction, mental illness, chronic pain and fatigue, and other conditions that are not immediately apparent can also have their daily lives strongly impacted by their disability.

However, many employees with a non-apparent disability are reluctant to disclose their disability to their employer, for fear that it may impact the way they are treated at work. That can present a barrier to getting accommodations, because you have to disclose in order to start the process.

How to Request an Accommodation

You don’t have to say the exact phrase “I...

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