Employers not making reasonable adjustments?
Under the Equality Act 2010 , you’re under a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers from the recruitment stage. Where you know, or you could reasonably be expected to know, that a worker has a disability and is likely to be placed at a “substantial disadvantage” by a provision, criterion or practice, a physical feature of your work premises or the lack of an auxiliary aid, when compared with workers who aren’t disabled, you’ll need to take such steps as it’s reasonable to have to take to avoid the disadvantage or to provide the auxiliary aid.
You should first discuss the position with the disabled worker to establish what they may need. However, the duty is to make “reasonable” adjustments, which may depend on such factors as your business size, the resources available to you, and the cost and practicability of making the adjustment. As such, it may not always be reasonable to implement a requested adjustment, or there might in fact be no adjustment that could reasonably be made to avoid a substantial disadvantage. The legislation doesn’t list the types of adjustment that you might have to make, but examples for existing disabled workers might be:
- providing wheelchair access
- arranging facilities to assist workers with sight or hearing or impairments
- purchasing specialist equipment, such as an ergonomic chair
- discounting disability-related sickness leave for the purposes of absence management
- providing additional time for work tasks
- including a disabled parking space in the workplace car park
- allowing different start and end times to the working day
- allowing time off to attend medical appointments.
Where the duty to make reasonable adjustments arises, you can’t require the disabled worker to pay for the costs of those adjustments.
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