The most common assumption about reasonable adjustments is also the most expensive one: that they are something large employers with HR departments have to worry about. They are not. The duty in the Equality Act 2010 has no headcount threshold, no turnover threshold and no exemption for micro-businesses. If you employ one person and that person is disabled within the meaning of the Act, the duty applies to you in full.
What does change with size is what counts as reasonable. That is where the flexibility lives, and it is a real flexibility — a five-person firm is not expected to do what a bank can do. But it is a flexibility about *what* you do, not about *whether* you engage at all. Employers who lose these cases almost never lose because an adjustment was too expensive. They lose because nobody asked, nobody wrote anything down, and the first written record of the conversation is the tribunal claim.
The duty, in one paragraph
Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 sets three requirements. First, where a provision, criterion or practice of yours puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage compared with people who are not disabled, you must take such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to avoid that disadvantage. Second, the same obligation where a physical feature is the cause. Third, the same obligation to provide an auxiliary aid where the person would otherwise be at a substantial disadvantage without one.
In plain terms: your rules, your building, and the kit someone needs. "Substantial" here means more than minor or trivial — a lower bar than the word suggests in ordinary speech.
One more provision does a lot of quiet work. You are not entitled to require the disabled person to pay any part of your costs of complying with the duty. You cannot ask an employee to fund their own chair, split the cost of software, or take the adjustment out of a pay rise. That is not a matter of good practice; it is in the Act.
When the duty switches on
You are not under the duty if you do not know, and could not reasonably be expected to know, that the person has a disability and is likely to be put at the relevant disadvantage. That sounds like a useful defence and it usually is not, because "could not reasonably be expected to know" is doing all the work.
Constructive knowledge is built from things you already have. A run of fit notes naming a condition. An occupational health report. A return-to-work conversation where someone mentioned that standing is difficult. A manager who was told informally and did not pass it on — the employer's knowledge includes what its managers know. A pattern of absence that any reasonable employer would have asked about.
Nobody has to say the words "reasonable adjustment" or "disability" for the duty to be live. If a reasonable employer would have asked the question, you are treated as knowing the answer.
The practical consequence is that the safest position is the incurious one's opposite: ask. A short, non-medical question — "is there anything we could change about how the job works that would make it easier for you?" — costs nothing and is the single most protective thing a small employer can do. The same conversation sits at the heart of managing staff sickness absence in a small business.
What "reasonable" looks like with real figures
An illustrative case, to show the shape rather than any particular employer's file. A warehouse and despatch business with eleven staff. A picker of nine years' standing develops a degenerative back condition. She is off for five weeks, and her fit note says she may be fit for work with amended duties.
The employer considers four things. A specialist chair for the packing bench and a height-adjustable workstation, around £1,050 between them. A phased return — three days a week for four weeks, building to full hours, at a cost of roughly £900 in wages for hours not worked. Reallocating the heaviest lifting element of the role, about 15% of her tasks, to two colleagues, with a small honorarium to each. And a permanent change to her shift pattern to avoid the 6am start, because getting moving in the morning is the hardest part of her day.
Total identifiable cost: a shade over £2,000 in year one, most of it one-off. Set against that, the alternative was losing a nine-year employee: recruitment, three to six months of a new starter at partial productivity, and the knowledge that walked out of the door — a bill that is comfortably five figures, as the real cost of a bad hire sets out.
Would every element be legally required? Not necessarily. Reallocating duties permanently to colleagues who did not sign up for them has limits, and a tribunal weighs the practicality and the effect on other staff. But the employer that considers all four, documents why it did three of them and declined one, and reviews the decision in three months, is in an entirely different position from the employer that did nothing while it thought about it.
Access to Work does not do what people think
Access to Work is a government grant scheme that can help with the cost of support for a disabled employee — specialist equipment, travel to work where public transport is not usable, a support worker, and similar. For 2026 to 2027 the maximum award is £69,260 a year per person.
Two things to be clear about. It is applied for by the employee, not the employer. And crucially, Access to Work does not pay for reasonable adjustments — those remain the employer's legal obligation, and the scheme is designed to supplement them rather than fund them. Where it helps is the layer above: the assistive technology, the specialist assessment, the support that goes beyond what an employer could reasonably be required to provide.
There is also a waiting period. Applications are not instant, and the duty does not pause while you wait. If an adjustment is needed now, make it now, and treat any grant that arrives later as a contribution rather than a precondition.
The process that keeps you out of trouble
Five steps, none of which requires an HR department.
Have the conversation and record it. A short note of what was discussed, what was agreed, what was declined and why, sent to the employee by email so there is a shared record. That single email is worth more than any policy document.
Get evidence proportionate to the decision. For a £200 chair, the employee's own account is enough. For a permanent role change, an occupational health referral is worth the few hundred pounds it costs, because it converts your judgement into someone else's expert opinion.
Trial, don't decree. Agree adjustments as a trial with a review date. It lets you test whether the change actually works without committing permanently to something that turns out not to help, and it reads far better than a flat refusal if it is ever examined.
Write down the ones you say no to. A refusal is not automatically unlawful — the duty is to take reasonable steps, not every conceivable step. But an undocumented refusal is indistinguishable from not having considered it, and that is how these claims are lost.
Review when things change. Adjustments go stale. A condition improves or worsens, a role changes, a building changes. A diarised six-monthly check-in takes ten minutes.
Note the overlap with the separate statutory route: an employee can also make a flexible working request, which carries its own timetable and consultation requirements set out in what small employers must do with flexible working requests. Handling something as a flexible working request does not discharge the reasonable adjustments duty, and the two can run at the same time over the same facts. Where employers come unstuck is treating a disability-related request as purely a scheduling matter, refusing it on business grounds, and finding out later that the correct legal test was a different and harder one — which is when it becomes an employment tribunal claim rather than a management decision.
Common questions
Do reasonable adjustments apply to small businesses?
Yes, in full. The duty under the Equality Act 2010 has no exemption based on headcount, turnover or sector — a business with two employees is subject to exactly the same duty as one with two thousand. What changes with size is what counts as reasonable in the circumstances, and a tribunal will weigh your resources, the practicality of the step, the extent to which it would remove the disadvantage and the disruption it would cause. So a small employer is not expected to match a large one's provision. It is expected to consider the question properly, take the steps that are reasonable for a business of its size, and be able to show it did.
Can I ask an employee to pay towards a reasonable adjustment?
No. The Equality Act 2010 expressly provides that an employer subject to the duty is not entitled to require the disabled person to pay any part of the costs of complying with it. That covers the obvious version — asking someone to buy their own equipment — and the less obvious ones, such as deducting the cost from a bonus, offsetting it against a pay review, or asking the employee to use annual leave to cover time lost to an adjusted schedule. If the employee chooses to buy their own equipment independently, that does not discharge your duty either. Where outside funding such as Access to Work is available, the employee applies for it and it supplements your obligation rather than replacing it.
What if the employee never told me they were disabled?
You are not under the duty if you did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know about the disability and the disadvantage. But constructive knowledge is broadly interpreted, and it is assembled from information you already hold: fit notes, occupational health reports, return-to-work discussions, informal comments made to a line manager, or an absence pattern any reasonable employer would have asked about. Knowledge held by your managers is generally treated as the employer's knowledge, even if it was never escalated. Nobody has to use the words "disability" or "reasonable adjustment". The practical protection is to ask openly whether anything about how the job works could be changed, and to record the answer.
How much can Access to Work pay, and does it cover the adjustment?
For 2026 to 2027 the maximum Access to Work award is £69,260 a year per person. It can help with specialist equipment, support workers, travel to work where public transport is not viable, and similar support. Importantly it does not pay for reasonable adjustments themselves — those remain the employer's legal responsibility under the Equality Act, and the scheme is designed to supplement rather than fund them. The application is made by the employee, not the employer, and it takes time to process. Because the duty does not pause while an application is pending, make any adjustment that is needed now and treat a later grant as a contribution towards the wider package of support.
