Dive Brief:
- PepsiCo Beverage Sales has settled a disability discrimination lawsuit by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to reasonably accommodate a blind customer care employee, EEOC announced Wednesday.
- Per a two-year consent decree, PepsiCo paid the employee $270,000. It also agreed to work with an accessibility consultant with experience in evaluating, testing and integrating software applications to ensure tools used by customer care employees at PepsiCo’s Winston-Salem, North Carolina, facility are accessible to those with visual disabilities.
- “The EEOC is pleased that PepsiCo is committed to working with a consultant to make its computer systems accessible to individuals with visual disabilities,” Melinda Dugas, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Charlotte district office, stated in a media release. She added that, “Accommodations specialists can be a valuable resource to help employers to meet their obligations under the ADA.”
Dive Insight:
A PepsiCo spokesperson stated in an email to HR Dive that, “PepsiCo complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and provides reasonable accommodations to support individuals in achieving their full potential within our organization. PepsiCo is fully committed to providing equal opportunities for all applicants and employees, ensuring our operating practices adhere to our Equal Employment Opportunity policy.”
“In this case, we’ve reached a resolution with both the plaintiff and the EEOC that asserts our compliance with the ADA and our continued efforts to further accessibility across our workplaces,” the statement said.
According to the lawsuit, prior to his start date, the employee referred PepsiCo to a vocational counselor who offered to conduct a technology assessment and purchase needed equipment. PepsiCo allegedly rejected the offer and instead tested two screen-reading software products, finding they were incompatible with its equipment systems, the lawsuit said.
PepsiCo later allegedly explained that it would take at least a year and cost up to $1 million to rebuild its system to be compatible with the screen-reading products and that a replacement system it planned to install wouldn’t be compatible with the technology. The employee was fired after PepsiCo couldn’t find him a suitable job that didn’t require him to use it, the lawsuit alleged.
Under the ADA, an employer is excused from providing a reasonable accommodation if doing so would impose an undue hardship, an EEOC guidance states.
This means “the accommodation would be too difficult or too expensive to provide, in light of the employer’s size, financial resources, and the needs of the business” — and not “just because [the accommodation] involves some cost,” the guidance points out.
The consent decree outlines how PepsiCo can assess undue hardship going forward. For instance, it instructs that the company can’t reject a proposed accommodation without first engaging in a good-faith interactive process.
Specifically, PepsiCo must conduct “a reasonable and verifiable inquiry into the cost or burden associated with a proposed reasonable accommodation and [consider] outside resources available to help or offset [that] cost or burden,” the consent decree explains.
For visually impaired customer care employees at the Winston-Salem facility, PepsiCo must work with the consultant to create a plan for developing accessible software tools. If PepsiCo determines implementing the plan would cause an undue hardship, it must explain in writing to the EEOC the steps it took to make this determination, the decree said.
An EEOC settlement last year with a Florida company highlights employers’ obligation under the ADA to work with visually disabled employees to find and install appropriate screen-reading software.
In that case, the company allegedly did not avail itself of free resources a blind telephone-based customer service representative offered or the assistance of any third party to make the software accessible.