Disability discrimination: employer not required to extend company sick pay

In O'Hanlon v HMRC, the EAT held that an employer would only very rarely be obliged, as a reasonable adjustment under the DDA, to give more sick pay to a disabled person than it would otherwise give to a non-disabled person on sick leave. The purpose of the DDA is to enable disabled persons to play a full part in the world of work, not to "treat them as objects of charity". A disabled employee will therefore find it difficult to claim full pay during sick leave (once any contractual entitlement has been exhausted) unless they can show that the absence was caused by the employer's failure to make reasonable adjustments that would have allowed the employee to stay in work.