In connection with its revisions to the regulations covering individuals with disabilities, OFCCP requires employers to use a Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability form to collect information from applicants and employees.  Based on initial feedback from the contractor community, OFCCP provided an electronic, writeable, version of the form.

OFCCP recently requested approval to modify the form to allow for a drop-down menu of the three possible responses, rather than checkboxes or radio buttons.  OFCCP states in its request justification that the requested change comes in response to contractor suggestions.  The revised form would ask the question, “Do you have a disability” followed by a drop-down menu with the three response options:  Yes, I have a disability (or previously had a disability); No, I don’t have a disability; and I don’t wish to answer.  The functionality of the proposed form would also apparently allow an individual to leave the drop-down box empty, as with a hardcopy form.

However, there remains an open question which OFCCP has yet to officially answer:  Do we need to retain a copy of the completed disability form, or simply maintain the responsive data?  At the recent NILG conference, OFCCP unofficially suggested the disability form is a “personnel or employment record” which must be preserved.  However, the provision regarding the disability self-identification form provides that such information shall be maintained “in a data analysis file (rather than in the medical files of individual employees.)  See § 60-741.23(d).”  Subsection 23(d) provides that the information “shall be collected and maintained on separate forms and in separate medical files…”  Thus, the requirement that the information be maintained in a data analysis file appears to be a specific exception to the requirement that a “form” be maintained.   Hopefully OFCCP will clarify this requirement in future FAQs.

In addition to the addition of the drop-down box, OFCCP has also requested approval of the form in 7 languages in addition to English and Spanish.