Sitting an exam counts as day-to-day life, even if you never sit one again
“EATStands for Employment Appeal Tribunal. It hears appeals from employment tribunal decisions on points of law, not on the facts. It is not a way of simply asking for a second opinion on the outcome. overturned the tribunal and ruled he was disabled outright, since exams count as day-to-day life.”
Being disadvantaged in a single exam or assessment is real evidence of a disability. You don't need your whole life to be affected.
- Exams and assessments count. A one-off test still counts as a day-to-day activity in law, even if it's not something you do every week.
- The comparison is with you, not with everyone else. What matters is how you'd perform without the condition, not how you compare to your colleagues or the general population.
- Struggling with reading, memory, or concentration counts. These are named categories the law already recognises as capable of affecting day-to-day life.
- Read this alongside Stedman v Haven Leisure Ltd and Elliott v Dorset County Council: three different conditions, the same underlying test, and the same result each time.
The situation
A police officer discovered he was dyslexic partway through a long, successful career, while going through a formal promotion assessment. Given extra time for the assessment, he still argued the tribunal was wrong to treat him as not disabled. The tribunal accepted his dyslexia put him at a real disadvantage in the exam, but ruled sitting an exam wasn't a "day-to-day activity", and that his difficulties elsewhere were only minor when measured against people in general.
What the tribunal found
The Employment Appeal Tribunal disagreed. Reading, understanding what you've read, and sitting a formal assessment are day-to-day activities in law, whether or not most people ever sit that particular exam. A condition affecting memory, concentration, or the ability to learn will almost always have some effect on ordinary life, and being disadvantaged in a real assessment is evidence of that, not something separate from it.
The tribunal had also compared him to people generally rather than to himself without the dyslexia, the same error picked up decades later in Stedman v Haven Leisure Ltd and Elliott v Dorset County Council. Rather than sending the case back to decide the disability question again, the EAT settled it there and then. He was disabled. Only the underlying discrimination claim went back to be decided on its own merits.
For the fuller legal test behind this, see our guide on what the law actually protects if you're neurodivergent.
Paterson v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. Case No. UKEAT/0635/06. Employment Appeal Tribunal. 23 July 2007.