Buddy says: Dyslexia may be a disability under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA). As a result, employees are protected from less favourable treatment due to their dyslexia, and you may be required to make reasonable adjustments to their working arrangements to remove any disadvantage that they may suffer.

Therefore it is important that this be discussed sensitively with the employee, with a view to obtaining a medical report to assess whether the employee is dyslexic, and if so, take reasonable steps to avoid any disadvantages they may face.

Awards of compensation for discrimination are uncapped and it is therefore important that you have the employee assessed as soon as possible, before decisions regarding promotions are made.

Employer information: If the employee does in fact suffer from dyslexia, and the reason you do not promote him is influenced by the problems with his written work, then not to not promote him is likely to be discriminatory.  The DDA defines discrimination as less favourable treatment on grounds of the Claimant's disability.  The less favourable treatment in this scenario would be the lack of promotion. In other scenarios, the relevant treatment could be the recruitment process, where the dyslexia could affect an applicant if all applicants were required to complete written work for the job application.

Disability in the DDA is defined as a physical or mental impairment having a "substantial and long-term adverse affect on ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities".  As writing is an activity that is undertaken on a regular basis it is likely that this may be a normal day to day activity.

When looking at whether the effect is substantial you should look at the effect of the condition on the employee, rather than by comparing their ability with the population at large.  Therefore, if the dyslexia is causing the employee numerous problems with written work it may be viewed as substantial.

You should also be aware of your duty to make reasonable adjustments that will stop the employee being treated less favourably. This could involve him completing his written work on computer with a spell checker or other such software. This could then mean that as well as complying with your duty to make reasonable adjustments you can promote the employee without worrying about the standard of his work.