When you are autistic and something at work feels off, it is easy to assume the system belongs to other people, usually people with job titles and budgets. In reality, a huge amount of what happens in employment law is written down in plain language and published in the open for anyone to read.
Employment Tribunal decisions in England and Wales are published on GOV.UK. You do not need to be a solicitor. You do not need an account. These are public documents that you can search, read and learn from if you are trying to understand how the Equality Act 2010 works in real life, especially if something similar is happening to you.
The government’s main search page for Employment Tribunal decisions is here:
In this article I focus on one case involving an autistic Senior Programmer who requested remote work as a reasonable adjustment, was refused, and went on to win his claims for failure to make reasonable adjustments and discrimination arising from disability.
You can read the original material for yourself here:
- GOV.UK listing – Mr P Ah-thion v Cloud Imperium Games Ltd (2406047/2022)
- Full Judgment PDF – liability decision
- Remedy Judgment PDF – compensation decision
The tribunal itself is very clear that these documents are public. At the end of the remedy decision it states:
“Judgments and reasons for the judgments are published, in full, online at www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions shortly after a copy has been sent to the claimant(s) and respondent(s) in a case.”
If you are trying to educate yourself about your rights at work, or you recognise patterns in your own situation, decisions like this are a useful way to see how concepts such as “reasonable adjustments”, “discrimination arising from disability” and the definition of disability are actually applied.
Quick but important disclaimer: I am not a solicitor, The Reasonable Adjustment is not a legal firm, and nothing here is legal advice. This article is commentary and education based on publicly available material. If you need advice on your own case you should speak to a qualified adviser, trade union representative, or solicitor.
Remote work as a reasonable adjustment, not a lifestyle perk
In Mr P Ah-thion v Cloud Imperium Games Limited, the claimant was employed as a Senior Programmer by a video game company with more than 400 employees. Like many staff, he had moved from office based work to home working during the Covid period. Later, the company wanted people back in a new Manchester office, which created obvious problems for him as an autistic person with a long and unpredictable commute.
The judgment sets out his diagnosis and disability status very plainly:
“The claimant was employed by the respondent as a Senior Programmer from 12 February 2018. The claimant has Autistic Spectrum Disorder (“ASD”). The claimant informed the respondent of his condition at the start of his employment.”
“The claimant is a disabled person within the meaning of section 6 Equality Act 2010 by reason of the impairment of ASD.”
That matters, because it locks in the starting point. Autism here is not treated as a vague personality trait. The tribunal accepts it as a disability within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010, in line with the government’s own definition of disability guidance. Once that is accepted, the duty to consider reasonable adjustments is not optional.
The tribunal then summarises earlier factual findings about how office working affected him compared with non autistic colleagues:
“We entirely accept, and indeed are bound by, the factual findings of Employment Judge Horne at a preliminary hearing that the claimant found working in the office face to face substantially more difficult than people without autism because of the need for face to face conversations, to be in a public place and to commute by car where the journey was of unpredictable length.”
That is the disadvantage in concrete terms. Not “autistic people dislike offices” in the abstract, but the specific combination of face to face interactions, public space, and an unpredictable commute that made office life substantially more difficult for him because of autism.
Working from home changed that. During the Covid period he realised home working was much better for his condition. When the company decided to move staff into a new Manchester office and push back towards in person working, he asked to continue working from home permanently. The tribunal records:
“We rely on the claimant’s evidence to find that prior to the Covid 19 pandemic he did not realise how much better for his condition working from home would be compared to working in the office.”
“Unsurprisingly, the claimant requested to work from home permanently. The claimant’s request was swiftly refused by his direct line manager, Mr Colson, within a couple of days.”
The word “unsurprisingly” is doing quiet work here. Once you accept that the office environment creates a substantial, disability related disadvantage, requesting permanent home working is not a wild demand. It is a logical adjustment request aimed at removing that disadvantage.
The parties agreed what the employer’s relevant rule or “PCP” was for the purpose of the reasonable adjustments claim:
“For the reasonable adjustments claim, the PCP was agreed to be requiring a senior gameplay programmer to do a substantial amount of their work from the respondent’s office.”
That requirement is what the tribunal tests. Does forcing a “substantial amount” of work to be done from the office put this autistic programmer at a substantial disadvantage compared with a non autistic programmer, and if so, were there reasonable steps, such as allowing full remote work, that the employer should have taken to avoid that disadvantage.
The tribunal accepted that the PCP did put him at that particular disadvantage, for the reasons already quoted about face to face interactions, public space, and commuting. It also records that he explained the consequences clearly to the company:
“The claimant had explained to the respondent that if they were unwilling to permit him to work from home on a permanent basis his disability of autism meant he could not travel and work in the Manchester office. The respondent therefore made the claimant redundant by a letter of July 2022.”
So the sequence is simple. Remote work requested as a reasonable adjustment. Request refused. Autistic employee explains that, without that adjustment, he cannot cope with the new office based role. Employer chooses redundancy rather than adapt the working arrangement.
On those facts the tribunal reaches clear legal conclusions:
“The claimant’s claim for a failure to make reasonable adjustments pursuant to sections 20 21 Equality Act 2010 is well founded and succeeds.”
“The claimant’s claim pursuant to section 15 Equality Act 2010 is well founded and succeeds.”
Sections 20 and 21 cover the duty to make reasonable adjustments. Section 15 covers discrimination arising from disability, where a person is treated unfavourably because of something that arises in consequence of their disability and the employer cannot justify it. If you want to dig further into the statutory wording, you can read Part 2 of the Equality Act 2010 here, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Employment Code of Practice sets out how tribunals are expected to apply it.
In this case, remote work is not treated as a trendy perk. It is treated as one of the obvious ways to remove or reduce a disadvantage that flows directly from autism in this particular role. That is what reasonable adjustments are meant to look like: specific, tailored, and rooted in the reality of that person’s job, not a generic policy line about “flexible working”.
Autism is not a template, adjustments are individual
It is important not to turn this into a new stereotype in the opposite direction. This case does not say that all autistic people must work from home, or that every office based role for an autistic person is discriminatory by default.
Speaking personally, I often prefer face to face appointments for certain situations, particularly medical discussions. Phone calls can add extra uncertainty or missing context. Being physically present sometimes feels easier than trying to decode tone through audio only. Other autistic people will be the exact opposite, and find phone or written communication far easier than sitting in a room with someone under fluorescent lights.
That is the point. Autism is not a single script. Adjustments that work for one person may be the wrong thing for another. What matters for the law is the individual, the job they are doing, the specific features of the workplace that cause difficulty, and the specific steps that would actually remove or reduce that difficulty. In Ah-thion, the tribunal accepted that the requirement to work a substantial amount of time from the office created a particular disadvantage and that permanent home working was a reasonable way to address it. A different autistic worker might need something completely different.
For autistic workers and other disabled staff, the practical lesson is that you are allowed to be detailed. You can set out plainly how the environment, commute, noise, social demands, or constant change affect you, and you can request adjustments that directly target those impacts, including remote work where it makes sense. For employers, the lesson is that blanket rules about “everyone back in the office” sit badly with equality law, especially where there is already a known disability and a proven alternative way of working.
None of this replaces formal legal advice. What it does give you is a concrete example, written by an Employment Tribunal and published on GOV.UK, showing how remote work for an autistic employee can move from “nice to have” into “legally required adjustment”, and what happens when an employer chooses to resist that shift instead of engaging with it properly.
Further reading and practical tools
If you want to dig deeper or draft your own request for adjustments, these official resources are a good starting point:
- Reasonable adjustments for disabled workers – GOV.UK
- ACAS guidance – reasonable adjustments at work
- ACAS template – reasonable adjustment request letter
- Equality Act 2010 guidance – GOV.UK
- ACAS overview – employment tribunals and how they work
- Citizens Advice – what happens if you win your employment tribunal case
- Employment Appeal Tribunal decisions – GOV.UK
If you recognise your own situation in any of this, do not rely on one article. Read the original judgments, take notes, and if you can, get proper advice before you decide what to do next.
Be First to Comment