Disability discrimination: Extent of s.6 duty to make reasonable adjustments

In Archibald v Fife Council, the House of Lords holds:

• An employment tribunal misconstrued the scope of the employer's duty (under s.6 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995) to take reasonable steps to prevent any of its arrangements from placing a disabled employee at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with people who are not disabled.
• The performance of that duty may require the employer, when making adjustments, to treat a disabled person more favourably in order to remove the disadvantage attributable to the disability.
• In this case that duty may have required the employer to transfer a road sweeper who became disabled (and as a consequence unable to continue in that job) to a vacant post involving sedentary work that she was qualified to undertake, even if the new post was on a slightly higher grade than the manual job.