The Accommodation That Requires a Work Order

September 10, 2026
Workplace Design

Say someone tells their manager they cannot get through the afternoon at their desk. The request goes to HR, and the conversation turns to the familiar options: work from home, adjust the hours, take leave, take more breaks.

Look at what is missing. The desk.

Every one of those options changes when someone works or where they work. None of them changes the place itself, which is sometimes a real part of what makes the job hard.

Many employers are seeing more requests. AbsenceSoft’s 2026 State of Leave and Accommodations report surveyed 1,200 HR leaders. Fifty-six percent said requests went up in 2025, the third year in a row. Among those, 74% said the increase was at least 21%. Mental health conditions were the leading reason for the third year running, and remote work was the most requested accommodation, followed by reduced schedules or intermittent leave, then continuous leave, then additional breaks.

Why I noticed

I have an invisible disability. It is the kind you check a box for on a job application, and most of the time I do not talk about it, because it is not the interesting thing about me.

Years ago a workplace got in the way of how I function, and accommodations had to come into play. What stayed with me was how short the menu was. Every option on it moved me in time or moved me out of the building. Not one of them touched the room I was sitting in, which was the thing causing the problem.

I sell furniture now, so weigh what follows accordingly. But that gap is real, it is structural, and it is fixable.

What the EEOC actually wrote

On February 11, 2026, the EEOC and the Office of Personnel Management issued FAQs on disability-related telework accommodations for federal employees, addressing obligations under the Rehabilitation Act, which incorporates the ADA’s employment discrimination standards.

FAQ 4 says that when several reasonable and effective options exist, an agency may choose an accommodation other than telework. FAQ 5 names some of those alternatives, including “environmental modifications (sound, smell, light, etc.)” alongside assistive devices, modified equipment, job restructuring and schedule changes.

The limits matter as much as the language, and they cut both ways. FAQ 19 says the document is not binding, calling it technical assistance that points agencies toward existing guidance, and notes that courts might not defer to the Commission’s views. It creates no new private-sector requirement to try in-office measures first. It also cautions against revoking existing telework accommodations without an individualized assessment, warning that an agency risks liability both when telework is the only effective accommodation and when an effective in-office alternative is necessary and is not provided.

The underlying principle is older and applies to ADA-covered employers. An employer may choose among reasonable, effective accommodations, giving the employee’s preference primary consideration. Saying no to remote work does not end the obligation to someone who is owed an accommodation. The alternative has to actually work. Telework may still be required when it is the only reasonable, effective option and does not impose undue hardship.

So the practical question is narrower than most employers frame it. Not whether you are allowed to offer something other than remote work. Whether you have something that works.

The list is longer than headphones

Read the Job Accommodation Network’s guidance on alternatives to telework and notice what fills it. For noise-related barriers: a private office, noise abatement panels, a noise-cancelling headset. For concentration problems involving visual distraction: a private office, or a cubicle away from busy areas. For fatigue: a private place to take breaks and rest on site. Its guidance on distracting work spaces adds rearranging furniture or partitions to block sightlines, and using a conference room when one is free. In the same discussion, JAN identifies telework as another option when on-site measures cannot meet the need and the job’s essential functions can be performed from home.

Furniture, layout and enclosed space are part of that guidance, not separate from the accommodation conversation.

These are options to work through with one person, not a ranking, and not a prescription that attaches to a diagnosis. Headphones may be exactly right. So may a schedule change. Neither should win by default because it is the only thing the person handling the request can authorize.

Three departments, one request

Picture the request landing on an HR generalist’s desk. Facilities controls workstation assignments. Finance controls the budget. The person accountable for producing an effective accommodation has authority over none of the options that involve the building.

A schedule change can be an approval and an email. Moving someone to a quieter workstation can involve facilities, IT and a seating plan. Anything with a wall in it can involve a quote, a purchase order and a lead time. When the person handling the request can authorize one and not the other, the options narrow before the conversation starts.

The result is an organization choosing from what it can deliver instead of from what would work. That is a process problem, not a character flaw in whoever is managing the request.

The pressure on them is real without being a countdown. EEOC guidance calls for a prompt response and treats unnecessary delay as a potential violation, while recognizing that obtaining equipment or making arrangements legitimately takes time. Both are true, which is an argument for building the route before anyone needs it.

It also helps to know what the route leads to. Gensler’s 2026 Global Workplace Survey covered 16,459 full-time office workers across 16 countries. Two-thirds said they hack their workspace to compensate for gaps in how it performs. One in four have rigged their own fix for ergonomics, temperature or visual privacy. That is not a study of accommodation requests, and it proves nothing about any particular building. It does suggest that a room count on a floor plan is a weak proxy for what a person can actually use on a Tuesday afternoon.

Hybrid work does not make the room irrelevant. When teams cluster their attendance on the same days, quiet space has to be counted on those days, not against a weekly average. A room that is free on Friday is not an answer for someone who needs it on Tuesday.

The money is smaller than people assume

Not every accommodation is a capital project.

JAN’s cost research drew on 5,406 responses from employers who had contacted the service between January 2019 and December 2024. Of the 1,425 who gave cost information, 61% reported no cost at all. Where there was a one-time expense, the median was $300. The 6% with ongoing costs reported a median of $2,400 a year. Employers also reported retention and productivity benefits.

Those figures cover many kinds of accommodations. They are not a price for a private office, an acoustic pod or a renovation, and they do not make furniture the cheap answer to anything. What they undercut is the assumption that a request automatically means a big number.

The legal question is also broader than whether someone is coping. In March 2025 the Second Circuit held in Tudor v. Whitehall Central School District that an employee’s ability to perform the essential functions of a job without an accommodation does not by itself defeat a failure-to-accommodate claim. The court sent the case back for further proceedings rather than creating a right to any specific accommodation. For workplace leaders the useful lesson is to stop reading “she is getting through the day” as evidence that the workplace is working.

Planning ahead is worthwhile, but individual accommodation duties and broader accessibility requirements are not the same thing. JAN separates individual accommodation obligations under ADA Title I from the accessibility requirements that govern construction and alteration under Titles II and III, and encourages employers to consider changes that provide broader accessibility. A refresh is a chance to handle recurring needs together instead of one ticket at a time. No universal savings figure attaches to that, only the advantage of having the conversation early.

Five things to do before the next request lands

Inventory usable space, not rooms. Which workstations are genuinely quieter. Which rooms are enclosed. Where someone can take a break. Where lighting or layout can be adjusted. And when any of it is actually free.

Put that inventory in front of whoever handles requests, with a named contact in facilities and workplace planning and the name of the person who can approve a change.

Decide who can act and how fast. An internal response target, an escalation path, and a way to put something interim in place while the longer-term fix is evaluated.

Document effectiveness, not the offer. The barrier, the employee’s input, why you chose what you chose, and how you will check whether it worked. Revisit anything that is not meeting the need.

Bring recurring needs into the next refresh or move. Ask the accommodation team which space-related barriers keep coming back, and talk about the pattern without circulating anyone’s medical history.

The point is not to buy a room so you can say no to remote work. It is to stop leaving the room out of the conversation. Before you tell someone the office can meet their needs, make sure the people handling the request are able to change it.

About the author

Morgan Mosher is VP of Strategy and Growth at Furngully, a New England contract furniture and workplace design firm, where she leads the workplace practice. She was previously the first female Partner at T3 Advisors, a tenant advisory firm serving technology and life science companies, later acquired by Savills. She hosts The Squeaky Wheel, a video series on the commercial furniture and workplace design industry, and co-founded The Kita Center in 2013. She writes about how workplace decisions actually get made, including the parts of the process the industry would rather not discuss.

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