He won because his employer failed to facilitate his involvement
in the investigation and disciplinary process by not making
reasonable adjustments for his disability at his disciplinary
hearing.
The employee, Mr Taylor, is profoundly and prelingually deaf. He
was not taught to sign at his school for the deaf and was instead
taught to adapt to the hearing world by lip reading. He has no
mother tongue and has acquired an understanding of English (both
lip reading and reading of the written word) without ever having
heard any language.
He held a BSc in civil engineering before his IT training, and
took a job with OCS Group, a provider of business cleaning
services, firstly as a payroll programmer and then as a database
developer.
In September 2003, Mr Taylor received an email from a
colleague, Ms Campbell. She asked for help with the database
system, which Mr Taylor had helped to design. He immediately began
work on the problem via remote access. But in doing so, he sent
several emails from Ms Campbell's terminal to his own which were
found not to be relevant to the work he was doing for Ms Campbell.
Ms Campbell reported this to Mr Taylor's line manager. The nature
of the emails has not been made public.
Mr Taylor was suspended shortly afterwards for his unauthorised
access of Ms Campbell’s email account. Three days later an
investigatory meeting took place with Taylor’s line manager, Ms
Hellens, whom Taylor wrongly thought would be representing him.
After this meeting a disciplinary hearing took place with Mr
Baccolini, the Communications Manager, whom Taylor found very hard
to lip-read.
The case report notes that lip reading is an imprecise art and
involves continuous guess work. The ability to lip read accurately
depends on a number of factors such as the quality of the light,
the ability of the person speaking to speak clearly and slowly and
the familiarity of the subject matter, words used and speaker to
the lip reader. It becomes even more difficult in stressful
situations.
Nothing was written for Mr Taylor before or at the commencement
of the hearing to explain that it was in fact a disciplinary
hearing and, according to the Employment Tribunal, Mr Taylor did
not participate effectively or understand what was happening. Yet
at the end of the hearing, Mr Taylor was dismissed. The hearing had
lasted 15-30 minutes. The Tribunal found that Mr Taylor understood
the questions being asked when he provided the written answers; but
he did not understand that he was dismissed.
Mr Taylor appealed internally. He tried to explain the matter
was a misunderstanding and an over-reaction – and this time he
asked for an interpreter.
An interpreter was provided by OCS – but only for two hours.
After this time the hearing continued for another one-and-a-half
hours during which time Mr Taylor's representative was also
required to interpret for Mr Taylor. The hearing was by way of a
review rather than a rehearing and the Appeal Chair subsequently
confirmed the decision to dismiss.
Mr Taylor then took his case to an Employment Tribunal, claiming
unfair dismissal and unlawful discrimination in breach of the
Disability Discrimination Act 1995. This time he was successful:
the Employment Tribunal concluded that the dismissal was unfair and
that OCS breached the Disability Discrimination Act in failing to
make reasonable adjustments by providing an interpreter.
OCS appealed the ruling but on 23rd May, the Employment Appeal
Tribunal upheld the decision for Mr Taylor.
The EAT wrote: "His dismissal was for conduct, but the decision
to dismiss was partly based on his failure to give an adequate
explanation. That is a reason which relates to his disability”.
