Mr Bryce was late three times in three weeks. He asked his managers for 15 to 20 minutes of leeway on his shift start time. They stopped offering him shifts, and a UK employment tribunal ruled that the employer had broken the law (Mr RJ Bryce v Sentry Consulting Limited, case 2600411/2021, judgment published on gov.uk in February 2023).

Bryce is dyslexic. He told the tribunal he often misread the numbers on his digital alarm clock. So he thought he had more time than he really did.

His employer's answer is the one most dyslexic employees hear. The shift starts when the shift starts. Everyone works to the same rule. The tribunal didn't accept it.

The case: 3 late shifts and a 20-minute request

Bryce worked as a security guard for Sentry Consulting, a private security firm. After three late starts in three weeks, his managers called him in.

He told them his dyslexia was making him late, along with the cold, frosty weather that month. He asked to be let in up to 15 or 20 minutes late. The firm didn't try it. It stopped giving him shifts.

The tribunal ruled that his dyslexia counted as a disability under the Equality Act 2010. The test is a substantial, long-term effect on normal day-to-day tasks. Reading the time on a digital clock was one. Keeping to a timetable, and planning around traffic and weather, was another.

Two of his claims won. One was failure to make reasonable adjustments. The other was discrimination arising from disability. Two further claims were thrown out.

The site did need cover 24 hours a day. The tribunal accepted that. It then said the need for cover had to be weighed against the harm to a disabled worker. Cover was one factor in the balance.

So what for you: if your request was refused because the rota needs cover, that refusal is not automatically safe. Your employer has to show it weighed the cost to you. And it has to show its working.

A rule that applies to everyone is the reason the duty exists

Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 sets out the duty to make reasonable adjustments. It kicks in where a "provision, criterion or practice" puts a disabled person at a real disadvantage. The test is how the rule lands on you next to people who are not disabled.

Read that phrase again. A provision, criterion or practice is just a rule that applies to everybody. That is what starts the duty. The point of section 20 is to force an exception to it.

So when a manager says "I can't, it applies to everyone", they have just described the problem the law was written for. They have not given a reason for saying no.

US law runs the same way. The Americans with Disabilities Act starts a two-way process once you ask. A blanket policy does not end it. The guide to ADA accommodations at work sets out what your employer has to do next.

So what for you: treat "everyone has to" as the start of the conversation. Then answer it with one specific change you want tried.

What Sentry could have done, and didn't

Employment lawyers reviewing the case listed four things the company could have tried (SSG Training and Consultancy analysis, March 2023):

  • Trial the flexible hours Bryce asked for, and see what broke.
  • Allow occasional late arrival on days where cover permitted it.
  • Move him to a different site with a later or more forgiving start.
  • Change his shift pattern to fit the mornings he could reliably make.

Sentry did none of them. More damaging, it never recorded why any of them wouldn't work.

That's how most of these cases are lost. The adjustment is usually workable. What's missing is any record of the employer thinking it through.

Cost is a weaker argument than managers think. In the UK, Access to Work can pay for equipment, software, and support workers. The employer's share is often small, and sometimes nothing. The Access to Work guide covers what the scheme pays for, and how long it takes right now.

So what for you: that gap works in your favor. Ask for the refusal in writing with a reason, and the work of justifying it lands on your employer.

Put the request in writing, in four moves

A written request does two jobs at once. It gets you an answer. It also builds the record you would need later.

Keep it to four moves. Name the rule. Name the effect it has on you. Name the change you want. Then ask for a written reply if the answer is no.

Something like this works:

"The 8am start is causing me a problem I have been managing badly. I am dyslexic, and reading a clock in the first few minutes after waking is unreliable for me. Could we try 15 minutes of flexibility on my start time as a three-month trial? If that is not possible, could you let me know in writing what the barrier is?"

The trial framing matters. A permanent change sounds like a precedent, and managers refuse precedents. A three-month trial sounds like a test, and refusing a test is hard to explain later.

Most dyslexic employees never send a message like this, because they don't know how to start it. The reasonable adjustments builder turns your specific difficulty into a conversation plan and a draft email in about two minutes.

So what for you: send it by email rather than raising it in a corridor. A verbal request that nobody wrote down is one your employer can later say never happened.

US readers: Dollar General paid $47,500 over one written test

This section is US law, not UK law. The pattern is the same, and so is the mistake.

A Dollar General employee in Muncie, Indiana had to complete computer-based training and then a written test. He asked for help reading the test, because he is dyslexic. He was told he could have no help at all, and that refusing the test meant demotion.

He refused to sit it without an accommodation. He was demoted to a lower-paid job with fewer hours.

The EEOC sued. The company settled for $47,500: $40 in back pay and $47,460 in damages. It also had to train every store manager in the district on the interactive process. And it had to report every accommodation request to the EEOC for two years (EEOC press release, 23 October 2013, EEOC v. Dolgencorp LLC, No. 1:11-cv-00755, S.D. Ind.).

Look at the split. Back pay came to $40, because the demotion cost him almost nothing in wages. The other $47,460 was for the way it was handled.

So what for you: in the US, "every employee takes the same test in the same format" is exactly the kind of policy the interactive process exists to vary.

The call: push, unless the standard itself is the point

Here's what the evidence points to, by situation.

If the rule is about process, push. Start times. Test formats. Note-taking duties. Deadlines on written work. The order a form has to be filled in. These are the easiest things to change, and the hardest to defend as fixed. Bryce won on exactly this kind of rule.

If the rule is a real safety or competence standard, ask for the format to change instead. Extra time is a format change. So is a reader, a screen reader, or a spoken version. Skipping the check itself is not. Asking for that weakens every other request you make.

If you have no diagnosis yet, ask anyway. Neither the Equality Act nor the ADA needs a formal report before the duty starts. What counts is the effect on your day-to-day work. And whether your employer knew, or should have known, about it.

If you've already had a written refusal with a reason, and a trial was refused too, you're past the asking stage. The decision in front of you now is whether to escalate, and that one has a clock on it.

In the UK, an Equality Act claim normally has to reach ACAS early conciliation within three months less one day. The clock starts from the act you are complaining about. Check your own date with ACAS, because it turns on when the refusal happened. In the US, an EEOC charge has a 180-day limit, or 300 days in states with their own fair employment agency (ACAS and EEOC guidance, checked August 2026).

So what for you: if you're going to escalate, put the deadline in your diary today, before the grievance process starts eating months.

The cost of quietly absorbing the rule

Not asking has a price. It is usually paid in unpaid time. Three alarms instead of one. Arriving 40 minutes early to be safe. Redoing a form because the fixed order made you skip a box.

The masking cost calculator puts a figure on it. Enter your salary and the workarounds you already run. It tells you what that time costs you a year.

That figure is useful in the meeting too. A manager weighing a 15-minute change against nothing will often say no. A manager weighing it against a real number tends to think harder.

So what for you: take the number into the meeting. It moves the discussion from a favor you're requesting to a cost you're both already paying.

What to do this week

  • Write down the exact rule that is causing the problem, in the words your employer uses for it.
  • Decide which single change would fix most of it, and pick a trial length.
  • Send the request by email, and ask for a written reason if the answer is no.
  • Diary the date you sent it. If there is no reply in two weeks, send a short follow-up on the same thread.

Bryce won because the record showed he asked, gave a reason, and was turned down without one. Yours can show the same thing by Friday.