A hearing-impaired Los Angeles man is suing the Bed Bath & Beyond retail chain, complaining that it fails to provide captions or transcripts for the promotional videos that play in the aisles of its stores.

Employers are supposed to reasonably accommodate an employee’s disability so he or she can perform the essential functions of the job. Some workers take that as a guarantee that—should they develop a disability—their employer must find a position the employee can do. That’s simply not the case.

Merced-based Alia Corp., which owns 20 McDonald’s franchises in the Cen­­­­tral Valley, will pay $100,000 to settle a former supervisor’s disability discrimination suit. The man claimed Alia illegally demoted him because of his intellectual disability.

Waconia-based Applied Vacuum Technologies (AVT) has settled a disability discrimination suit with the EEOC. A former employee had filed the complaint after the company terminated him.

A court has OK’d a trial for a mentally ill worker who was turned down when he asked to be transferred to another supervisor. The man blamed his subsequent discharge on a failure to accommodate.

Disabled employees may be en­­titled to some time off as an accommodation, but there are limits. If an employee is constantly absent when his disability makes it impossible to work, you may be able to discharge him. That’s because attendance can be an essential function of a job—and constantly missing work may show that the employee can’t perform that essential function.

Employees who serve in the military are entitled to return to their jobs after their active duty ends and otherwise receive special consideration for service. But those rights have limits.

Pushed to do more with less, many employers are asking employees to work longer hours. That can cause workers to lose sleep and may even result in diagnoses of insomnia. But not everyone who is sleep deprived and takes medication to sleep is disabled and entitled to reasonable accommodations, such as a shorter workday.

Let’s face it: Some employees are a bit strange. Sometimes, their behavior may even be an indication of serious mental health problems. But before you rush to demand the employee get counseling or see a doctor, remember that the ADA prohibits such requests unless there is a clear business necessity for the exam.

Because the ADA requires employees to show they are disabled based on individual restrictions, a class-action lawsuit against an employer isn’t appropriate in most cases.

The ADA doesn’t cover everyone who has any kind of medical problem. Even something like complete deafness in one ear may not be enough to make an employee disabled.

Q. We currently have 15 employees, but several work part time. Are we required to provide reasonable accommodations under the ADA or the MHRA?

Q. An employee requested an accommodation for a medical issue. We asked her to provide a note from her medical provider regarding the need for accommodation. She brought in a note but it’s unclear what the physician is trying to say. What should we do?

Under the ADA and the MHRA, disabled workers are entitled to reasonable accommodations. Deciding what’s reasonable requires an interactive process in which both employer and employee discuss options that allow the employee to perform essen­­tial job functions. The employer then can choose which accommodation it prefers.