Searching for the "best" accommodation. (Disability Law).

When offered a choice of several possible accommodations for an employee with a qualified disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are you free to pick the one that suits company interests? Or must you strive for the "best one" for the worker? If the latter, how do you define what is indeed the best?

Longstanding policy set by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) states that the employer may ultimately decide as it wishes, so long as the resulting accommodation is "effective." In rare legal challenges of this standard so far, courts have generally upheld employers having the final say--but questions often linger about what constitutes being sufficiently "effective." Analysis becomes more complicated when …