The accommodation cost myth — and the public data your CFO probably hasn't seen

Note on data: this article references the Job Accommodation Network's (JAN) published cost data. Specific percentages and dollar figures should be verified against JAN's most recent published report at askjan.org before being cited in external materials. The qualitative shape of the findings has been stable across decades; the specific numerics update periodically.

The Job Accommodation Network is a U.S. Department of Labor–funded service that has tracked the cost and effectiveness of workplace accommodations for decades. Their reports are published annually and available at askjan.org.

The headline findings, consistent across recent years of reporting:

• A substantial majority of accommodations cost the employer nothing to implement.
• The median one-time cost of accommodations that do require expense is in the low hundreds of dollars.
• Accommodations costing over $1,000 are a minority of cases, even at large companies.
• The findings have been stable across economic cycles, reporting methodologies, and the introduction of new accommodation categories (digital, remote-work, neurodivergent-specific) over the period.

Specific percentages and dollar figures should be verified against JAN's most recent published report before being cited externally. The shape of the findings has held; the precise numbers update annually.

When the median accommodation costs less than a team lunch, the calculation that is protecting the budget is producing the retention failure that costs an order of magnitude more.

— Debra Solomon

There is one important qualification. "Cost" in JAN's data is the dollar cost of the accommodation itself. It does not include the process cost — the time the company spends on legal review, on sign-off layers, on internal documentation, on the conversations that produce the accommodation decision. Most companies experience the process cost as significant even when the accommodation itself is free, and the process cost is the part the company controls. A free accommodation that requires four weeks of legal review and three sign-offs costs the company real money. JAN's data does not include that money. The fix for it is institutional, and it is independent of the accommodation cost itself.

Most accommodations cost little or nothing. Some accommodations cost real money. Naming the second category accurately is more important than dismissing it.

Three categories of accommodation can carry meaningful cost.

Physical workspace modifications — specialized ergonomic equipment, soundproofing, dedicated quiet-room buildouts, accessible-route construction — can run from low thousands of dollars to mid-five-figures depending on scope. These are most common in physical-disability accommodation; they show up in neurodivergent accommodation when sensory environment is a primary concern.

Specialized software with per-seat licensing — assistive technology, captioning services for sustained meeting load, screen-reader licenses, dyslexia-support reading tools — typically runs as a recurring annual expense rather than a one-time cost. Per-seat costs are typically low but compound when an accommodation is needed across many employees.

Personal support roles — job coaches for some neurodivergent employees, sign-language interpreters for sustained engagement, communication assistants — are the most expensive category and the rarest. When they are the right accommodation, they tend to be transformative for the employee's effectiveness in the role.

For most companies, these categories cover a small minority of accommodation requests across a year. The reason they show up in CFO conversations more than they should is salience — they are the cases the company remembers, the cases that required real decision-making, the cases that produced an actual budget line. The cases that cost nothing did not.

I have never told a CFO that accommodations cost nothing. I tell them what they actually cost, by category, with citations. The conversation gets shorter after that.

— Debra Solomon

A well-designed accommodation policy has a budget line for the high-cost minority, a streamlined process for the no-cost majority, and a decision framework for the middle. The CFO's fear of the high-cost minority is reasonable. The generalization of that fear to every accommodation request is not.

Frequently asked questions

How much do workplace accommodations actually cost?

According to the Job Accommodation Network's published data — tracked over multiple decades across U.S. workplaces — a substantial majority of accommodations cost the employer nothing, and the median cost when expense is incurred is in the low hundreds of dollars. Accommodations costing over $1,000 are a minority, even at large companies. These findings have been stable for long enough that no honest accommodation cost analysis can avoid them. JAN's reports are publicly available at askjan.org. (Specific percentages and dollar figures should be verified from JAN's most recent published report before citing.)

What's the most expensive type of workplace accommodation?

The highest-cost categories are physical workspace modifications (specialized ergonomic equipment, soundproofing, dedicated quiet-room buildouts), specialized software with per-seat licensing (assistive technology, captioning services), and personal support roles (job coaches, sign-language interpreters for sustained engagement). These cases are real, sometimes substantial, and represent the minority of requests in most companies. A well-designed accommodation policy budgets for them specifically rather than treating every accommodation as if it were one of them.

Why does our company believe accommodations are expensive when JAN's data says otherwise?

Three structural reasons. CFO conservatism in cost estimation for novel categories, where the absence of internal data defaults to higher estimates. The conflation of accommodation cost with process cost — legal review, sign-off layers, documentation — which is the part finance actually experiences. And the disclosure-fear loop, where employees don't file requests because they've absorbed signals that asking is unwelcome, which means the company's internal data continues to under-represent the no-cost majority. All three are institutional, not individual.

What's the cost of NOT providing accommodations?

It's larger than the cost of providing them, by a substantial margin. Year-one departures from neurodivergent employees who didn't file accommodation requests are individually more expensive than the lifetime cost of every accommodation that employee would ever request. Legal exposure from systematically discouraging requests compounds. Talent pool contraction — both neurodivergent candidates and neurotypical candidates who care about accommodation policy — is real, measurable, and slow to repair. Every line of the cost-of-not-accommodating math is larger than the corresponding line of the cost-of-accommodating math.

How do we present JAN's accommodation data to our CFO?

One slide is enough. JAN's median accommodation cost on the left. The process-cost-versus-accommodation-cost split (showing what's actually inflating internal estimates) on the right. The replacement cost of a single year-one departure at the bottom. Most leadership teams have never seen these three numbers on the same page. Once they have, the decision tends to be straightforward — the accommodations are the cheap part of the program.

If you're weighing an accommodation request and worried about how the cost will be received — or if you're an HR leader trying to change the cost conversation at your company — the conversations about what actually happens after the request is filed are happening with the people on both sides of it.