Testing applicants’ basic reading and writing skills could land employers in court.
The warning follows a landmark case which ruled mild forms of dyslexia to be considered as a disability. In July, Chief Inspector David Paterson won his case against the Metropolitan Police for their failure to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate his disability – particularly in relation to an examination for promotion.
An initial employment tribunal ruled he was not disabled but this was overturned on appeal. A further tribunal will now take place to rule whether his claim for disability discrimination succeeds.
Marcus Difelice, partner at leading law firm Brabners Chaffe Street, said: “Employers need to seriously consider if such tests are necessary or, if they can alter them in a way that makes them fairer to people with dyslexia.”
Dyslexia affects around 10 per cent of the population, including celebrities such as Richard Branson, Keira Knightley and Prince Harry.
It is estimated around three million of Britain’s workforce may suffer from the disorder.
2 Responses
Dear God – so now we are going to be forced to hire illiterate m
What I would like to know is how on earth did an illiterate rise to be a Chief Inspector? No wonder the crime on our streets is out of control and the police even more so.
In the dock?: 3 Rs and DDA
I fully support all the provisions of the DDA as I understand them, and the need for making all reasonable provisions to accommodate employees’ disabilities as any organisation can possibly allow.
But is this headline not misleading? If an Employer does not know or cannot test for any disabilities that may affect an employee’s reasonable duties, how can the employer ever possibly make the necessary allowances?
More specifically, how could a Chief Inspector ever rise to such a senior rank without such disabilities without these having been taken into account?
As a case in point, a long time ago, I came across a large private-sector, manufacturing company that sold most of its high-value products by weight. I was astonished to learn that the person responsible for weighing their products on despatch couldn’t actually read, but ‘knew’ what everything should weigh and had got away with this until the largest customer complained. Wrong person, wrong job, wrong appointment criteria, wrong managers, wrong company – you may think? If that person had been blind with a registered disability, you might have thought it farcical to appoint such a person in so critical a job, at least without providing ‘talking scales’? But in this case?
More up-to-date – as an extreme position; suppose you found your locum GP had reading difficulties and misread your son’s case notes? What if he then sent your son-and-heir off to A&E for a castration, rather than perhaps the circumcision his condition may rather better have benefited from? Flippant and unrealistic I know – but you may take my point?
Does this not bring tears to all our eyes?
Jeremy