Employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to working conditions in order to remove any substantial disadvantage suffered as a result of an employee's disability.
In Rakova v London North West Healthcare NHS Trust an employee with learning disabilities claimed that a failure to provide specialist software placed an employee with learning disabilities at a substantial disadvantage in that it caused her to be less efficient in her work tasks. The EAT held that the tribunal had erred in assuming that being less efficient than colleagues coupled with a desire to be more efficient could not be a substantial disadvantage. It commented: "Whilst it might be that a Stakhanovite desire for greater productivity would be entirely unrelated to any disadvantage suffered by the employee in question, it is also possible that, where the disability in question means that an employee is unable to work as productively as other colleagues, adjustments to enable her to be more efficient would indeed relate to the substantial disadvantage she would otherwise suffer." The claim was therefore remitted.
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