Published on 12, July, 2020
This happened to me and I'm wondering how often it has happened to others. For me, the disability is ASD, and that would be relevant for most here as well, but I am interested to know about other disabilities as well.
This is an example scenario:
You inform your employer that you have a disability. You provide proof (sick notes, diagnosis letter, etc.). They refuse to provide reasonable adjustments, or they promise reasonable adjustments for a particular event/meeting/etc. and then refuse to provide them at the last minute when you are already in attendance at the event/meeting/etc., and then they later use the excuse that not only do they not accept that you have a disability, but that they do not even believe your diagnosis to be genuine.
Has that happened to anyone here? Was it during employment or afterwards, e.g. at an Employment Tribunal, that they made it clear that they refused to accept the disability? Did they request further proof of your condition at the time, or did they simply keep it to themselves that they thought that the evidence you provided was not enough.
Who is responsible in a case like this? Is the employee required to provide proof of the disability when they disclose the disability to the employer, or, if the employer doesn't think they have been provided with enough evidence, are they expected to make their position clear to the employee and request further proof?
I get that we are treated badly as a matter of course, just because we are on the spectrum, but I wonder whether I am even more unlucky in that regard than others on the spectrum or if others have experienced this.
Thanks.
Hi DragonCat16,
Sorry to hear you've had such a bad experience at work. It sounds like from your description that your employer may have violated the Equality Act and you may have a case for workplace discrimination (disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice!). At the very least they should provide you with reasonable adjustments without creating conflict and certainly without implying that your diagnosis isn't genuine.
I would recommend that you call the NAS helpline and talk through the situation with someone there, who might be able to put you in contact with someone who can help and be an intermediary between you and your employer. The helpline is on 0808 800 4104 (10am-4pm Mon-Thur, 9am-3pm Fri).
It would be useful to keep a diary of sorts of any interactions you've had with your employer on this issue, what has been said to you on the subject of your diagnosis, what reasonable adjustments were promised and not given, and so on.
Best wishes,
Ross - mod
Thanks for the advice. The matter is already a Tribunal case but keeping records of everything is an excellent suggestion for anyone presently seeking reasonable adjustments, or for anyone who has the slightest suspicion that they are not being treated fairly because of their disability.
I know what the Equality Act says, but with the way it is worded, the legality or illegality of some of the things that happened to me are open to interpretation, which I really hate because I think laws in particular should be black and white. Apparently, if an employee discloses a disability, it is perfectly ok for an employer to outright deny reasonable adjustments, or to promise and then later deny them, and then claim later that they didn't accept there was a disability. This is the argument put forward by the solicitors, anyway, and a barrister I briefly consulted also said that this was considered acceptable from a legal standpoint. I keep getting different answers back from different people, even other legal professionals. It is up to the judge to decide what's legal or not, but surely there is some way of knowing the law without having to rely on someone being favourably predisposed to me on the day of the hearing (which is of particular concern to me, given that most people aren't favourably predisposed to me, because of the disability that compelled my colleagues to treat me so badly in the first place).
I would like to get support with this but I don't think I can face making a phone call right now, and there is a month-long wating list for receiving a reply from the NAS via email.
While advice would be nice, this situation has pretty much destroyed me and I don't think I will be able to get past it, especially if the Tribunal decides my former employer did nothing wrong, or, even worse, decides that they did do something wrong but doesn't see fit to do anything about it.
I would really like to know if this type of thing has happened to anything else, or if I am just suffering alone. I don't even know whether it would make me feel better to know this is a common thing and I'm not alone, or if I really just want to be assured that mine is a unique situation. From what people have already posted, it seems that similar things happen to others, but I wonder why that is the case. Do employers do this stuff because they know they'll likely get away with it, since disabled people rarely pursue their rights at a Tribunal? If that's the case, then obviously stiffer penalties should be imposed. Not only should the employee be compensated, but employers should be made to pay a punitive fine, so that they'll think twice before treating people this way.