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 what you've experienced. Personally, I've not faced this before - they have been happy to accommodate for my needs. But not all employers are able to accommodate for these kinds of adjustments, and so they reject - not because they discriminate or hate people disabilities, but because they don't feel they can provide the adjustments, and thus feel that you'd be uncomfortable and unhappy working at the firm.
In terms of responsibility, the onus is on the employee, since they are requesting reasonable adjustments. The employee needs to provide evidence that their request is supported by medical advice/documentation. However, it is polite (but should not be expected) for the employer, upon receiving a request for reasonable adjustments, to ask the employee for documentation, rather than outright rejecting the request.
Much love <3
Thanks for your response. My former employer is a huge educational institution, and was well-able to provide the adjustments I requested, as they would not have cost anything at all because all I was asking for was a minor adjustment in how a meeting was held.
I was already unhappy at my job because my colleagues, on the basis of my disability, deliberately put wheels in motion to destroy my professional reputation and end my career, so it wasn't exactly an employer who cared about my comfort level.
I did provide medical evidence for my disability, but it was impossible to tell whether that was enough because I was never told that it wasn't. At the point of the employee having provided the evidence, I think that the onus for requesting further evidence, as required, shifts to the employer.
Do you say that the onus is on the employee for a legal reason, or just from common sense? It does not say anything about such responsibility in the Equality Act, so I want to know what the law actually says. If you are saying that there is a law requiring the employee to provide proof and the employer has the right to ignore the proof and still claim that there was no disability, please tell me where I might find this law written down.