Workplace Disability Discrimination

Workplace disability discrimination is usually pictured as something involving a visible physical condition. The legal definition is far wider, and the gap between the two is where most organisations get caught.

• Invisible conditions. Mental health conditions, chronic pain, diabetes, hearing loss.
• Episodic conditions. Something that affects work in periods rather than continuously, which is often read as unreliability.
• Temporary conditions. Covered while they last.
• Past disability. A condition someone had previously and no longer has.
• Future or imputed disability. A condition someone may develop, or one you assume they have.

The episodic category causes the most trouble in practice, because the performance conversation happens during a bad period and the record does not capture why. Months later that record is the only thing anyone can see, and it reads as a capability problem rather than a period of illness.

The Commission’s guidance on employee rights under the Disability Discrimination Act sets out the definition. This is general information rather than legal advice.

See Sentrient’s equal employment opportunity course and workplace compliance system.