The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana recently issued a 41-page opinion discussing ADA accommodation requirements, including whether an employer must provide voice recognition software to an employee who suffered from a loss of fine motor skills.
The plaintiff, Maria Picard (“Picard”), was a medical transcriptionist who had carpal tunnel syndrome and a degenerative neuromuscular disease. While on FMLA leave for carpal tunnel surgery, Picard asked her supervisor for permission to use a particular brand of voice recognition software – Dragon Naturally Speaking – and for permission to either use a quiet room or to work nights and weekends. Picard asserted that this software would allow her to transcribe without relying on her limited fine motor skills. After consultation with Human Resources, the Hospital denied her request. Picard later submitted two letters from physicians which opined that her condition represents a significant handicap in her profession and that she be permitted to use the Dragon software. The Hospital concluded that at the time, the letters did not indicate a medical necessity, and because she was meeting the productivity requirements, they would not fulfill the request. Picard later resigned and took a position at a different medical center.
She sued her former employer, alleging discrimination and retaliation under the ADA. The Court ultimately held that Picard produced sufficient evidence to raise a jury issue on her failure to accommodate claim based on St. Tammany’s denial of voice recognition software that could minimize painful typing.
The Hospital initially argued that Picard could not show she is “disabled” under the ADA. The Court, however, noted that the vast majority of federal courts to consider CMT have treated it as an ADA-covered disability, and held that although an inability to type, standing alone, is insufficient to show that a plaintiff is disabled, here Picard “claims to have great difficulty holding heavy objects, doing household chores, typing, writing, turning pages, tearing pieces of paper, using a stapler, and doing ‘anything with fine motor skills.’” The Court determined that based on this evidence, a reasonable jury could conclude that Picard was substantially limited in the major life activity of performing manual tasks.
The Hospital next argued that requiring the purchase of voice recognition software, and the other requests, were not reasonable accommodations. The Court, however, found that there was “nothing facially unreasonable about [the] request to have a software program installed on her computer and to be permitted to work in quiet conditions. Those changes are precisely the sort of accommodations that Congress contemplated when it passed the ADA.” The Hospital argued that it did accommodate Picard in a number of ways including its purchase of Dictaphone ExSpeech software. However, although Picard briefly used this software, she claimed the most commonly used keystrokes were too painful because of the carpal tunnel surgery. Additionally, although the Hospital granted Picard a leave of absence for her carpal tunnel surgery, the surgery did not cure her CMT, or otherwise address her typing limitation.
Two important lessons flow from this case. First, these types of accommodation-denial claims are likely to increase for employers in light of the newly enacted ADA Amendments Act, which significantly broadened the scope of “who is disabled” under the Act. Second, it highlights the importance for employers to engage in the interactive process with employees. Here, it appears the hospital may have assumed that providing one brand of software eliminated their obligation to consider a different one. A more extensive dialogue with the employee may have revealed why one was better suited to the task than the other. Based on the opinion, it’s clear that the Court understood and bought into the plaintiff’s argument on that front.