THE NUMBER THAT ENDS THE EXCUSE
The Job Accommodation Network surveyed employers who contacted JAN between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2024, receiving 5,406 responses from 26,028 employers surveyed; 1,425 provided cost data. 61% of accommodations cost absolutely nothing to implement. The median accommodation that did have a cost had a one-time expense of $300. Employers reported the benefits far outweighed any associated costs (Job Accommodation Network, 2019–2024 employer survey, https://askjan.org/topics/costs.cfm).
Every time an employer refuses an accommodation request citing cost, this is the number they're arguing against. Not a hypothetical. Not an estimate. 1,425 employers who actually implemented accommodations and reported what they paid. 61% paid nothing. Of those with costs, the median one-time expense was $300.
The "undue hardship" defense – the legal standard an employer invokes to refuse an accommodation under the ADA – requires demonstrating the accommodation would impose significant difficulty or expense. Significant. For an organization with an HR department, a legal team, and the infrastructure to onboard employees, $300 is not significant. For 61% of the accommodations surveyed, the cost was $0. Zero is not a hardship.
What costs nothing: flexible scheduling, work-from-home arrangements, task restructuring, modified break schedules, changes to supervisory methods, allowing an employee to use their own assistive technology. What costs $300 or less: ergonomic keyboards, alternative mice, screen readers, noise-canceling headphones, adjustable desks, task lighting, written instructions, quiet workspace modifications.
What actually happens: An autistic employee asks for written instructions instead of verbal-only directions. Cost: $0. The employer says no, citing "workflow disruption" or "fairness to other employees" or some other reason that is not cost. The employee burns out trying to retain verbal instructions in a processing mode that doesn't work for them, makes errors, and gets written up for the errors. The accommodation that cost nothing would have prevented the errors the employer is now documenting as performance issues.
Or: An employee with ADHD asks to work from home two days a week because the open-plan office is a sustained attention disaster. Cost: $0 – the employee already has a laptop and home internet, and the work is remote-capable. The employer says no, citing "team cohesion" or "we need everyone in the office." The employee's productivity drops, they're late on deliverables because they're spending cognitive resources fighting distraction instead of doing the work, and the employer starts a performance improvement plan. The accommodation that cost nothing would have made the employee more productive, but the refusal gets framed as the employee "not being a good fit."
This is the pattern. Accommodations get refused for reasons that are not cost, but cost is the reason the employer puts in writing because "undue hardship" is the legal term. Then the data comes back: 61% cost nothing, the median is $300, and employers report the benefits outweigh the costs. The refusal was never about the money. It was about not wanting to change the workflow, or not believing the employee actually needs it, or some unstated belief that accommodating one person isn't fair to everyone else.
The law does not require fairness to other employees as a condition of providing a reasonable accommodation. It requires the accommodation unless it imposes undue hardship. The JAN survey shows the hardship argument fails on the evidence for the vast majority of requests. What's left is the thing the employer won't say out loud: we don't want to.
The gap between what accommodations cost and what employers believe they cost is not a knowledge problem. It's a compliance problem. The data has been public for years. The EEOC has published guidance. JAN is a free resource funded by the Department of Labor specifically to help employers figure out how to accommodate employees with disabilities. The information is available. Employers are refusing accommodations and citing cost anyway, and when the refusal gets challenged, the cost justification collapses under the actual numbers.
61% of accommodations cost nothing. That's the 2024 figure from JAN's ongoing survey. Not 61% cost very little. 61% cost nothing. The employee needed a schedule change, or written instructions, or permission to work from home on high-distraction days, or a quiet workspace instead of the open floor plan. The cost to the employer was $0. The cost to the employee of not getting it was burnout, errors, lost productivity, and in a lot of cases, losing the job.
The ADA has been law since 1990. Employers have had 36 years to learn what reasonable accommodation means and what it costs. The JAN survey data goes back to 2019 and received 5,406 employer responses, with 1,425 providing cost data. The evidence is in. 61% of accommodations cost nothing. The median of those with one-time costs is $300. The benefits outweigh the costs.
When an employer refuses an accommodation request, the question isn't whether the accommodation is expensive. The data says it probably isn't. The question is what the refusal is actually about, because it isn't the $300.
