A man who applied for a job at a Stormont department has been awarded £15,000 compensation after it was found he was discriminated against during the recruitment process.
Terry Johnston, who was diagnosed with dyslexia in his 40s, told BBC News NI the experience left him feeling “worthless”.
An employment tribunal has ruled that the Treasury failed to make “reasonable adjustments” to its selection tests to take account of Terry’s dyslexia.
In a statement, the Finance Ministry said it “takes note of the outcome of this case and will implement all lessons learned.”
“It affects your mental health,” Mr Johnston said.
“You don’t sleep, you worry, you think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t do this.’”
“You start making excuses not to do the work you do.”
Mr Johnston then obtained employment in another sector of the civil service.
Linguistic complexity
The case concerned an application by Mr Johnston for a position as a statistician assistant with the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) in 2020.
The selection process required candidates to pass a numerical and statistical test before they could proceed to the interview stage.
Mr Johnston said he was disadvantaged in the digital test because of the linguistic complexity of the wording of the questions.
“When you’re dyslexic, tests like this are very word-heavy,” he said.
“There’s no problem with the math in the test, it’s just the way it’s presented in double negatives, triple negatives.
“You couldn’t have imagined a more complicated test.”
Mr Johnston, a qualified mathematics teacher with a degree in psychology, asked to be allowed to take an alternative numerical test in which the word content was reduced, or to be offered an exemption.
Faced with her refusal, he began discrimination proceedings financed by his union.
Mr Johnston had already been in the role as a temporary worker for more than two years.
However, he had failed to reach the interview stage for the same position in 2017 and 2018 due to his test scores.
He tried again in 2019, but withdrew early because he felt Nisra had not met his needs during the testing process.
In 2020, the department said it would not be able to judge whether Mr Johnston could do the job if his requests were granted, but argued he had offered other accommodations, such as more time.
“Word-light” test
The court acknowledged that the ministry had proposed some adjustments, but found that these compensations were ineffective.
He suggested the department had the opportunity to develop a “light-word” test that would have assessed his digital skills without putting him at a disadvantage because of his language problems.
Mr Johnston said he understood that scrapping the test altogether would have been “unfair” to other candidates, but added: “I don’t understand why they didn’t come up with another system instead of sticking strictly to this one.”
Image source, Sam Marsden
Employers should try to accommodate people with dyslexia and should start by educating themselves, another worker with the condition said in response to Mr Johnston’s case.
Sam Marsden, an engineer diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, has worked for Red Bull F1, founded three start-ups and now works as a consultant, advising other companies.
“About half of Red Bull’s staff are dyslexic… In the places I’ve worked where there wasn’t a strong representation of dyslexic people, you could see that people’s attitudes about it were different; there was more prejudice; there was more stigma,” he said.
His advice to employers is to “start by self-educating.”
“The problem is to view dyslexia as an inability to read; that view is the worst thing you can do, because dyslexia is not an inability to read; it’s a different way of thinking; it’s a different way of structuring the mind,” he said.
“There is an initial shift in people accepting it without stigma, which is good; it means there is no conflict.
“The next, most beneficial step would be to understand this phenomenon and understand the applications of neurodivergence.”
