Reasonable adjustments for dyslexia at work

How the Equality Act applies to dyslexia

Dyslexia is one of the conditions people most often hesitate to call a disability, usually because they have built a career's worth of workarounds. The Equality Act 2010 is clearer than the instinct: if the impairment has a substantial, long-term adverse effect on day-to-day activities such as reading, writing or working memory, judged without those workarounds, the person is protected. Whether they use the word disabled is irrelevant, and as the neurodivergence hub sets out, no formal diagnostic report has to be produced before support can be discussed.

The workplace pattern is distinctive: dyslexic employees are frequently strong on exactly the things organisations say they value, problem solving, verbal reasoning, seeing the whole system, and are then filtered and judged through the one channel they find hardest, dense text produced at speed. Adjustments work by widening the channel, not lowering the bar.

Barriers and the adjustments that address them

Reading load responds well to format changes. Text-to-speech software turns a backlog of documents into something that can be absorbed on a walk. Documents written in plain structure, headings, short paragraphs, summaries at the top, help everyone but are an adjustment for a dyslexic reader. Where a process buries the one action someone must take in page six of a policy, the adjustment is a one-line summary of the action, not a course on skimming.

Written output is the mirror image. Dictation software, proofreading tools, and a colleague or tool reviewing outgoing text where accuracy is critical all reduce the cost of producing polished writing. So does rethinking whether polish is needed at all: an internal update does not need the same finish as a client contract, and judging both by the same standard penalises dyslexia rather than measuring the job.

Instructions and memory follow the same rule as elsewhere in this cluster: written reference material beats one-off verbal briefings, but for dyslexic employees the format matters too. A short bulleted checklist outperforms a page of prose; a diagram may outperform both. Extra time for reading-heavy or writing-heavy tasks, and warning before anyone is asked to read aloud or minute a meeting, remove two of the most common flashpoints.

A workplace needs assessment is often the fastest route to the right toolkit, and Access to Work can fund both the assessment and the software or training it recommends. The employer's part is to act on the report rather than filing it.

What tends not to work

• Spelling and grammar as a proxy for competence, in recruitment or in performance reviews.
• Buying assistive software and never providing the training to use it. Licences are not adjustments; working setups are.
• Asking someone to read aloud or take live minutes without warning, then reading their discomfort as unpreparedness.
• Dense, unstructured documents as the only source of truth for critical processes.

Making the adjustments stick

Software-based adjustments have a particular failure mode: the licence lapses, the laptop is replaced, the IT image changes, and the adjustment silently disappears. Record what was agreed, including the tools, in a form that survives equipment refreshes and manager changes, and put a review date on it. The hub page covers the conversation itself and the disclosure question that often precedes it.

This guide is general guidance, not legal advice. For advice on a specific situation, speak to an employment law specialist, ACAS or the EHRC.