Reasonable Accommodation Letter: What to Write (With a Sample)

A reasonable accommodation letter is a short written request asking your employer to change something about how you work, so you can keep doing your job. In the US it opens the ADA interactive process. In the UK the same document is called a request for reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010.

Most people never send one. Not because they don't need it, but because they don't know what to write, and they're terrified of saying too much.

This guide gives you the exact structure, the wording for the two lines everyone gets stuck on, and a full sample letter you can work from.

What is a reasonable accommodation letter?

It's a written request that says three things: you have a condition that affects your work, here is the specific adjustment that would help, and here is what you'd like to happen next.

That's the whole document. Most letters that work are under a page.

What it is not:

• Not a medical disclosure. You are generally not required to name your diagnosis.

• Not a request for special treatment. You're asking for the conditions that let you do the job you were hired to do.

• Not the end of the conversation. It opens a process where you and your employer work out what's actually workable.

Why you should put it in writing

It creates a dated record. A written request establishes when you asked. Managers leave, teams reorganise, and "we agreed I could start at ten" is impossible to prove six months later.

It forces specificity. "I'm struggling" invites sympathy. "I need a 10am start on days I work on site" invites a decision.

It removes the performance. No eye contact, no managing someone's discomfort, no explaining a fluctuating illness while exhausted. You write it once, calmly, and send it.

It gets routed properly. A written request has to go somewhere: HR, occupational health, a formal process. A verbal one dies with the person you told.

What to include in a reasonable accommodation letter

Six parts, in this order.

1. A single opening line stating what you're doing

I'm writing to request a workplace accommodation under my employer's accommodation process.

Naming it as a formal request is often what triggers the obligation to respond. Don't bury it.

2. Your role, briefly

Job title, team, how long you've been there. One line. It orients whoever picks the letter up.

3. The limitation, not the diagnosis

This is where most letters go wrong. Describe what you can't reliably do, not what you have:

The first version keeps the conversation on the adjustment. The second moves it onto your medical history, where you have to keep justifying yourself.

If you'd like to name your condition, that's your call, and some people have good reasons to. But it isn't the price of entry. There's more on where that line sits when you talk about your illness at all.

Standing is only one example. If your limitation is fatigue, concentration, commuting or scent, the free kit gives you the equivalent sentence for each.

4. The specific adjustment you're asking for

Be concrete and be small. "More flexibility" is unanswerable. These are answerable:

• A seated workstation, or permission to sit during tasks currently done standing

• A start time of 10am rather than 8:30

• Two remote days per week, chosen weekly rather than fixed

• Permission to keep water and salt at my desk

• Rest breaks of ten minutes every two hours, taken as needed

• Meetings scheduled after 11am where possible

Two or three of these. Not nine. A letter with nine requests reads as a complaint; a letter with three reads as a plan.

If mornings are your worst window, that's a real and describable pattern. There are physiological reasons morning symptoms hit hardest, and a shifted start time is one of the cheapest accommodations an employer can grant.

5. Why it works, in one sentence

Connect the adjustment to the job, not to your suffering:

A seated workstation would let me complete the full shift without the interruptions I currently need.

You're making it easy to say yes. Employers approve things that sound like solutions, not like concessions.

6. What you'd like to happen next

Close with a clear ask: a meeting, a written response, a date. I'd welcome the chance to discuss this. Could we find time in the next two weeks?

What to leave out

• Your full medical history. Give what's needed for the request in front of you.

• Apologies. Not "sorry to be difficult." You're using a process that exists for this.

• Predictions about how bad it might get. Ask for what you need now. You can ask again later.

• Everything at once. Three well-chosen requests beat nine.

• Anything you can't sustain. Don't offer to "make up the hours in the evening" if evenings are when you're finished.

Reasonable accommodation letter sample (US)

If you work in the UK, do not send this version. The next section explains why, and the free kit contains the correctly worded one.

US and UK: use the right term

The framework depends entirely on where you work, and the vocabulary is not interchangeable.

United States. The ADA covers employers with 15 or more employees. A request triggers what's called the interactive process. The Job Accommodation Network publishes free guidance on accommodations by condition; the EEOC covers the legal side.

United Kingdom. The equivalent is reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010. Use that exact phrase, because "accommodation" isn't the term the process runs on, and using the wrong one can send your request to the wrong desk. Acas has plain-English guidance.

Elsewhere. Protections vary widely. Look up your national framework, and check whether your employer has its own internal policy, which usually sets out the route, the form and the timescale.

After you send it

Keep a copy, and send it by email so there's a timestamp.

If nobody replies, follow up in writing after ten working days. One line is enough. It puts the request back on someone's desk and extends the record.

If the answer is no, ask for it in writing with the reason. The reason usually tells you what to change.

If the answer is "let's see how it goes", pin it down: what's being trialled, for how long, and when it will be reviewed.

And if it becomes contested, stop working alone on it. An employment adviser, a union representative or a lawyer will know things about your specific situation that no article can.

Questions

The free Workplace Adjustment Kit

Five printable pages that go further than this article can. The six parts of the letter at a glance. A wording bank covering nine limitations, with the exact sentence to write for each and the adjustments that match it. The US letter and the UK letter, separately, with the blanks marked. And a twelve-point checklist for before you send, plus what to do if nobody replies, if the answer is no, or if it becomes contested.

For the wider picture, covering when to disclose, how to protect your energy across a working week, and what to do when accommodations aren't enough, start with working with a chronic illness.

Sources and further reading

The information in this article is drawn from the official sources below. Frameworks differ by country, so read the one that applies where you work.

• Job Accommodation Network, US Department of Labor: Employees' Practical Guide to Requesting and Negotiating Reasonable Accommodation Under the ADA

• U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship under the ADA

• Acas, UK: Reasonable adjustments at work

• UK legislation: Equality Act 2010, section 20: duty to make adjustments