Reviewing Your Own SF-3112A: A Self-Audit Checklist

Emily A. Hall ·

The SF-3112A is where you describe your own disability and how it affects your ability to perform your job. It is the only part of the application written entirely in your voice, and it is routinely the weakest document in the package.

Before you submit yours, run it against this.

1. Does it connect conditions to specific duties?

This is the central test, and it is where most statements fail.

Weak: "My back pain makes it very difficult to work."
Strong: "My position requires sitting at a workstation for six to eight hours per shift. I cannot remain seated longer than twenty minutes without needing to stand, which interrupts monitoring tasks that cannot be left unattended."

The second version tells a reader what the job requires, what you cannot do, and why those two facts are incompatible. The first version tells them you are struggling.

2. Have you actually read your position description?

You are describing why you cannot perform the duties of your position. You should be working from the document that defines them, not from memory.

Go through it and identify which duties you cannot perform and why. Duties you can still perform are not a weakness in your case — the standard concerns useful and efficient service in the position as a whole, and pretending you can do nothing damages credibility.

3. Is it specific about frequency and duration?

"Sometimes" and "often" tell a reader nothing. Numbers tell them something.

How many days did you miss? How long can you sustain a task before you have to stop? How often does an episode occur? If you have leave records, attendance data, or documentation of missed time, that is evidence and it belongs in your account.

4. Does it match your medical records?

Your statement will be read alongside your medical documentation. Where they diverge, the divergence gets noticed.

If you describe limitations your records never mention, that is a problem. If your records document limitations you never mention, that is a wasted opportunity. They should tell the same story.

5. Have you avoided both extremes?

Understating is common among people uncomfortable discussing their limitations. Overstating is common among people afraid of not being believed. Both damage the claim.

Describe what is true, in detail, without adjectives doing the work that facts should be doing.

6. Have you addressed accommodation?

If your agency attempted accommodation, say what was tried and why it did not resolve the problem. If accommodation was requested and denied, document that. If nothing was possible given your condition, explain why.

Silence on this point invites a question you would rather answer yourself.

7. Is it in your own words?

A statement written in someone else's voice reads as written in someone else's voice. Yours should sound like you — clear, specific, and factual, but yours.

Last check

Read it as if you were a stranger who has never met you and knows nothing about your job. Do you come away understanding what the position requires, what you cannot do, and why? If not, revise until you do.

The Federal Disability Review offers document review of applications you have prepared. You remain the author of every document.

Keep reading

If you would like this reviewed against your own situation, see the Document Review.