£345 vs £96,128: two dyslexia tribunal wins, 6 Qs answered

A Dundee tribunal ordered a charity to pay £96,128 this month. The charity had faked claims against a dyslexic manager (Employment Tribunals Scotland, Feb 2026).

A different tribunal gave another dyslexic worker just £345. Her bigger discrimination claims are still waiting to be heard.

Six real questions, answered straight, below. That's the plan for this week.

This week's six questions

• Is a dyslexia assessment worth it as an adult?
• Can an employer make up reasons to fire a disabled worker?
• Does an open-plan office make work harder with dyslexia?
• Are engineers more likely to be dyslexic?
• What happens when a tribunal award is small?
• Can your boss mock your writing if you're dyslexic?

Some of this week's numbers are big. Some are small. Both still matter, and both still teach you something you can use.

Is a dyslexia assessment worth it as an adult?

A private US evaluation costs $1,500 to $5,000 or more (Sachs Center, Aug 2026). Most insurance won't cover it.

UK adults pay less: £690 to £882 through the British Dyslexia Association. That gap matters.

The cost pays back once you need proof for an adjustment request. It matters less if you're just curious. NHS waiting lists are long, so most working adults still go private.

The full price breakdown is in the dyslexia assessment cost guide. It walks through the numbers step by step.

Book the assessment before you need it as proof, not after a dispute starts.

Can an employer make up reasons to fire a disabled employee?

No, and a Dundee tribunal proved it this year. Fife Employment Access Trust, a charity, faked claims against a dyslexic manager and her support worker.

It fired both, with no fair process. That was its first mistake.

The tribunal ordered a combined £96,128. That's £58,401 to the manager, £37,727 to her support worker (Employment Tribunals Scotland, Feb 2026). Written evidence decided the case: timesheets, emails, meeting notes.

Employers don't need a diagnosis on file to be liable. They just need enough facts to already know. That bar is lower than most bosses think.

Keep your own written record of instructions and feedback. It's what wins these cases.

Does an open-plan office make concentration harder with dyslexia?

Open-plan noise raises stress by 34% at work. It lowers mood by 25% too (Sander et al., 2021). A separate study found people remembered fewer words in noisy open-plan rooms (Jahncke et al., 2011).

Neither study is dyslexia-specific. But the mechanism, extra strain on working memory, fits.

Four fixes help, and none require naming dyslexia to anyone. Start small.

Try noise-cancelling headphones, protected quiet hours, a better desk spot, or batched interruptions. If a request for headphones gets refused, the reasonable adjustments builder turns it into a written ask, in about two minutes. The Access to Work guide covers funding for the headphones.

Ask for a trial of one fix first, headphones are easiest, before requesting a formal review.

Ask early. Most managers say yes to something this small.

Are engineers more likely to be dyslexic?

Maybe. The Institution of Engineering and Technology says up to 30% of UK engineers may be dyslexic. That's three times the general rate.

It calls this an estimate, not a formal survey (IET, Aug 2020). Still, the pattern is hard to ignore.

The riskiest tasks are reading technical drawings, running calculations, writing reports, and fast site email. Each has a cheap fix: a read-aloud pass, a locked template, or a same-day recap. None of the four need an employer to know why.

If that list sounds familiar, none of those fixes need an explanation.

Small changes, kept up over time, beat one big fix that never gets used.

What happens when a dyslexia tribunal award is small?

A small number doesn't mean a weak case. A Nottingham tribunal found Miss K Dale disabled by dyslexia. It ordered her old employer to pay £345 in unpaid notice (Dale v A Hudson, June 2025).

That £345 only covers notice pay. Her bigger discrimination claims were still waiting to be heard.

The tribunal had already found her disabled, before those claims were even argued. That part got less attention than the £345.

Don't judge a case by the first figure published. Discrimination findings and pay awards are often decided apart.

Can my boss mock my writing if I'm dyslexic?

Not without limits. A charity boss mocked a dyslexic employee's writing at a board meeting. He called his policy papers hard to read, even with proofreading and dictation help already agreed (Debont v Marsh Farm Futures, 2021/2022).

The tribunal ruled this was unlawful harassment and discrimination. It also found a later redundancy was staged to remove him.

Public criticism can cross a legal line once others are watching. Even well-meant feedback can cross it.

If a mistake gets raised in public, write down what was said, and when, the same day.

What this week's cases add up to

Three tribunal outcomes this week share one pattern. Written evidence decided every one, not the size of the diagnosis or the payout.

The file that wins has dates, emails, and your own notes in it. Simple beats clever here.

Start that file today, even if you never need to use it.

None of the three cases needed a clean win to matter. Each one moved the law forward a little. That's how most workplace rights get won: case by case, not all at once.

You don't need a tribunal to start your own file. Most disputes never get that far. A clear written record often ends an argument long before a hearing date.

None of this needs a lawyer to start. It just needs a habit: write things down, on the day they happen, in your own words. That habit costs nothing and takes two minutes.

Big award or small, disclosed or not yet, the same rule holds. Paper beats memory every time a dispute lands on someone else's desk.

We cover both ends on purpose. A £96,128 win and a £345 win teach the same lesson, just at different sizes. Read the small ones too.

A simple evidence file covers four things: what happened, the date, who else was there, and any written follow-up.

• Save emails or messages that confirm an adjustment was agreed, refused, or changed.
• Note the date and place of any meeting where your dyslexia or your work came up.
• Keep a copy of anything written about your performance that you disagree with.
• Write a same-day summary after any conversation that matters.