QuoteReasonable accommodation: a term used in the employment context to refer to modifications or adjustments employers make to a job application process, the work environment, the manner or circumstances under which the position held or desired is customarily performed, or that enable a covered entity's employee with a disability to enjoy equal benefits and privileges of employment; this term is sometimes used incorrectly to refer to related aids and services in the elementary and secondary school context or to refer to academic adjustments, reasonable modifications, and auxiliary aids and services in the postsecondary school context
QuoteLyons v. Smith, 829 F. Supp. 414, 419 (D.D.C. 1993), foreshadowed Mark H. In Lyons, the federal district court affirmed a hearing officer's decision that a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) did not fit in the IDEA category of "other health impaired." At the same time, it reversed the hearing officer's decision declining to order that the child be given special education pursuant to section 504. The court declared that the child was entitled to "an education designed to meet his individual educational needs as adequately as the needs of nonhandicapped persons are met."
Lyons is precisely parallel to the situation that is likely to become common in the wake of IDEA eligibility cutbacks and section 504/ADA coverage expansion: a claim by a non-IDEA-eligible child, not for damages relief, but rather for prospective creation and implementation of a program providing appropriate education under the section 504 standard. Lyons cautioned that section 504 does not require anything more than preventing discrimination on the basis of disability and expressed doubt that the interventions required to serve a child who is not eligible under IDEA in a nondiscriminatory manner would include special education, but it placed its emphasis on the regulation mandating that the needs of the child be met as adequately as the needs of others. In response to a request for interpretation of the duties that public schools owe students covered by section 504 but not IDEA, the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education stated that the section 504 appropriate education duty does not incorporate any cost or other limit as may be conveyed by a "reasonable accommodation" standard but instead that precedent imposing such a limit in some education cases applies to post-secondary institutions only. "Letter to Zirkel," 20 Individuals with Disabilities Educ. L. Rep. 134 (1993). Thus, in the view of the Department of Education, the section 504 appropriate education duty may in fact be more exacting than the Lyons court envisioned.