accessibility glossary

Reasonable Accommodation

A reasonable accommodation is a change to a policy, practice, or environment that lets a person with a disability participate, without imposing an undue hardship on the organization providing it.

The term comes from employment and public accommodation law rather than web accessibility specifically, but it’s a useful lens for digital contexts too: providing a document in an accessible format on request, or offering a phone-based alternative to an inaccessible online form, can function as a reasonable accommodation while a permanent fix is in progress.

It’s generally treated as a stopgap, not a substitute for building accessible digital experiences in the first place, since case-by-case accommodations don’t scale and can themselves create delay and inequity.

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