Once you are covered by the Equality Act 2010, your employer has legal obligations towards you, and you have enforceable rights. This page explains what those rights are.
The reasonable adjustment duty
The most important right for most disabled workers is the duty to make reasonable adjustments.
If a provision, criterion, or practice applied by your employer, or a physical feature of the workplace, or the absence of an auxiliary aid, puts you at a more than minor disadvantage compared to non-disabled workers, your employer is required to steps that are reasonable to remove that disadvantage.
In plain terms: if the way your employer does things puts you at a more than trivial disadvantage because of your disability, they must take reasonable steps to change it.
This duty arises automatically. Your employer does not have to wait for you to make a formal request, and you do not have to use the words “reasonable adjustment.” Once your employer knows, or could reasonably be expected to know, that you are disabled and that you are at a disadvantage, the duty is triggered.
What counts as reasonable?
There is no fixed list of what adjustments are reasonable. It depends on the circumstances. A Tribunal will consider factors including how effective the adjustment would be, how practicable it is, the cost, the size of the employer, and the disruption it would cause.
Common examples include:
- Changing working hours or allowing flexible working
- Allowing working from home or a different location
- Providing specialist equipment or software
- Modifying how tasks are allocated or how performance is assessed
- Allowing additional rest breaks
- Phased return to work after illness
- Adjusting absence management policies so that disability-related absences are not counted in the same way as other absences
- Providing or facilitating a support worker or job coach
- Adjusting the way you are communicated with
The test is not whether an adjustment is convenient for your employer, or whether they have made adjustments for other people. It is whether the specific adjustment would be reasonable in your case.
The duty cannot be justified away
Unlike some other discrimination provisions (see below), the duty to make reasonable adjustments cannot be justified. If an adjustment is reasonable, it should be made unless your employer has made a different adjustment addresses the same disadvantage.
Discrimination arising from disability
Under section 15 of the Equality Act 2010, it is unlawful to treat you unfavourably because of something arising in consequence of your disability, unless the employer can show that the treatment is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
This is a broader protection than direct discrimination. You do not need to show that a non-disabled comparator was treated more favourably. You simply need to show that:
- You were treated unfavourably
- The treatment was because of something arising from your disability
- Your employer knew, or could reasonably have been expected to know, that you were disabled
Examples of things “arising from” a disability include: periods of absence, needing rest breaks, difficulty meeting deadlines, reduced productivity, or behaviour related to a mental health condition.
Your employer can defend a section 15 claim by showing that the treatment was justified, that it was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
Direct discrimination
It is unlawful for an employer to treat you less favourably than they treat or would treat a non-disabled person, because of your disability.
Direct discrimination cannot be justified. If your employer treats you worse because you are disabled, or stigmatises or applies a stereotype to you, that is unlawful, full stop.
Direct discrimination is less common in disability cases than section 15 discrimination or failure to adjust, but it does occur, for example, where an employer refuses to appoint someone to a role solely because they are disabled, or where a disabled worker is treated more harshly in a disciplinary process than non-disabled colleagues would be, because of stereotypical assumptions about your disablity.
Indirect discrimination
Indirect discrimination occurs when your employer applies a provision, criterion, or practice that applies to everyone but puts people with your particular disability at a particular disadvantage, and your employer cannot justify it.
This often overlaps with the reasonable adjustment duty in disability cases, but they are separate legal claims and the distinction can matter.
Harassment
It is unlawful for your employer, or for colleagues acting in the course of their employment, to engage in unwanted conduct related to your disability that has the purpose or effect of:
- violating your dignity, or
- creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for you.
Harassment does not have to be intentional. If conduct related to your disability has the effect of harassing you, and it is reasonable for it to have that effect, it may be unlawful, regardless of what was intended. For harassment claims, the connection to disability can be a bit weaker than for discrimination arising from disability claims, but the legal threshold for mistreatment to amount to harassment is higher than for other claims.
Victimisation
If you do something protected under the Equality Act, such as making a complaint about disability discrimination, supporting someone else’s complaint, or giving evidence in a disability discrimination case, your employer must not treat you badly because of that.
Treating you badly because you have asserted your rights, or because you have supported someone else in asserting theirs, or even because your employer believes you have done or will do anything connected with the Equality Act is called victimisation and it is unlawful.
This protection matters because many disabled workers are reluctant to raise concerns for fear of what will happen next. The law recognises that fear and provides a remedy for it.
Time limits
Employment Tribunal claims for disability discrimination must generally be brought within three months, less one day, of the act complained of. Where there is a continuing course of conduct, time runs from the last act in that series.
These time limits are strict. The Tribunal has discretion to extend time in some circumstances, but that discretion is not always exercised. If you think you may have a claim, do not wait.
ACAS Early Conciliation pauses the time limit while conciliation is ongoing. See ACAS Early Conciliation for more detail.
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This page provides legal information, not legal advice. It reflects the law in England, Scotland, and Wales.