When a tribunal case involves dyslexia, the diagnosis is rarely the issue. What matters is what the employer did once it knew.
In Dr N Clark and Ms C Goble v Fife Employment Access Trust (FEAT), decided in December 2025, a Scottish employment tribunal found that a mental health employment charity had failed to make reasonable adjustments for a dyslexic programme manager and for the colleague who supported her. Both won claims for unfair dismissal, and between them they were awarded more than £96,000.
It is an unusually stark case, but most of what went wrong is ordinary: software that never got installed, support that was forgotten when processes started, and decisions made without anyone asking what the disabled employee needed.
What happened
Dr Clark managed a five year training project funded by the Scottish Government. FEAT accepted that she is disabled by phonological dyslexia. The tribunal heard that for her this involves visual distortion of text, fatigue, anxiety and sensory overload, and that she relied on specific software, dictation, audio conversion and in-person support to do her job.
Ms Goble provided administrative help to the project and in-person disability support to Dr Clark. FEAT disputed that Ms Goble was disabled, but the tribunal found she was during the relevant period. It also found FEAT knew she was likely to be disabled, including from an occupational health report that advised treating her as if she had a diagnosis, and took no steps to assess her needs.
Both were suspended in late 2023. The tribunal found that Dr Clark’s laptop never worked properly, the software she needed was never installed, and her in-person support was not considered when she was suspended. It described FEAT’s conduct as “unreasonable, chaotic and deliberately opaque”.
What the tribunal decided
Dr Clark succeeded in claims for unfair dismissal, failure to make reasonable adjustments, harassment related to disability and unlawful deduction from wages, and was awarded £58,401.73. Ms Goble succeeded in claims including unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal, whistleblowing detriment and failure to make reasonable adjustments during her suspension and disciplinary process, and was awarded £37,727.68. Some claims, including Dr Clark’s victimisation claim, failed.
Lesson 1: Agreeing an adjustment is not the same as delivering it
Everyone at FEAT seems to have known what Dr Clark needed. The software was not a mystery. It just never arrived on a working laptop.
This is one of the most common patterns we see. An adjustment is agreed, nobody owns it, and months later the employee is being judged on work they never had the tools to do. If you agree an adjustment, name who is responsible, set a date and check it has happened. Our guide to reasonable adjustments and your legal responsibilities sets out what the law expects.
Lesson 2: Adjustments do not stop when a formal process starts
When Dr Clark was suspended, her support arrangements were not considered. Ms Goble won a reasonable adjustments claim about how her own suspension and disciplinary process were run.
Suspensions, investigations and disciplinary hearings are often where disabled employees face the biggest barriers: long letters, short deadlines, meetings at short notice, loss of access to systems. A dyslexic employee may need documents in an accessible format, more time to read evidence, or the chance to respond verbally. The Lidl tribunal case made a similar point about ADHD in a disciplinary hearing.
Lesson 3: Knowledge does not wait for a formal diagnosis
FEAT argued Ms Goble was not disabled. The tribunal found the organisation had enough information to know she probably was, and did nothing to find out. Once an employer knows, or ought reasonably to know, the duty to consider adjustments applies.
Managers do not need to be medical experts. They do need to take disclosure seriously, ask what impact it has, get advice when unsure, and write things down. A workplace needs assessment is often the quickest way to turn a disclosure into specific recommendations.
Lesson 4: Dyslexia support is usually cheap and specific
Dyslexia at work tends to affect reading and writing at speed, spelling, organising large amounts of text and remembering verbal instructions. The adjustments that help are rarely complicated:
- assistive technology such as text to speech and dictation software, installed and working
- documents in accessible formats, with clear fonts and layouts
- extra time for reading heavy tasks
- templates and written instructions
- human support where the role needs it
Our dyslexia style guide shows how to make written material easier to read for everyone, not just dyslexic colleagues.
Questions for HR and People leaders
The useful question is not whether you would win at tribunal. It is whether you could show, with documents, that you took each of these seriously:
- Do managers know what to do when someone discloses dyslexia?
- Does every agreed adjustment have an owner and a date?
- Do your suspension and disciplinary procedures say how adjustments carry on during them?
- Would you notice if an employee’s software or support quietly stopped working?
How Enna can help
The FEAT case is a reminder that good intentions about dyslexia do not count for much if nobody follows through. We help employers close that gap.
Our reasonable adjustments: putting it into practice workshop is built for HR teams and managers who want a clear process from disclosure to review. If someone has disclosed dyslexia and you want expert recommendations, we carry out workplace needs assessments. And if you want an independent look at your policies, including how adjustments work during suspension and disciplinary processes, our neuroinclusion audits are designed for exactly that.
To talk it through, book a call with our team.
