Disabled workers are leaving jobs they could have kept. Research published in autumn 2026 puts the cause less in the law than in how businesses handle requests for support, be it slow decisions, unclear processes or conflict that could have been avoided. For the screen industries, where much of the workforce is freelance and productions move quickly, the distance between a good process and a poor one can be wide. This article sets out what the duty requires, who is owed it, what the new evidence shows, and what screen businesses can do about it. It covers England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own disability discrimination law and the position there differs.
Getting this right is not only about avoiding claims. Around 16 million people in the UK are disabled, close to one in four working-age adults, so disabled people are a large part of both the audience and the talent available to productions (Family Resources Survey figures, collated by the disability charity Scope). Authentic storytelling depends on disabled people working across the industry, not only in front of a camera or behind a microphone. A business that handles access well widens the pool of skilled people it can draw on, keeps those it has already trained and sets an example to promote good practice across the sector.
Under the Equality Act 2010, a business must make reasonable adjustments when a disabled person is placed at a substantial disadvantage compared with people who are not disabled.
The duty has three parts:
A failure to make a reasonable adjustment can be unlawful disability discrimination, meaning the disabled person could bring a claim against the business in the employment tribunal.
The Act does not define how long any of this should take. It asks what steps are reasonable, not how quickly they must be made. That silence is where things can go wrong since without a benchmark, a request can sit unanswered while a business forms a view or seeks a second opinion or waits on an external service. WorkWise already signposts Acas’s guidance on reasonable adjustments at work, a sound starting point for the process itself.
The duty reaches well beyond a payroll of employees. A business owes it to job applicants as well as to current staff. The Equality Act defines employment to include a contract to do the work personally, which brings in many freelancers and others engaged to carry out the work themselves. Where a business uses people supplied through an agency or a loan-out company, it owes the duty to them too, alongside the business that supplies them.
This article uses “disabled” in the sense the Equality Act gives it, which turns on the effect of a physical or mental impairment rather than on how a person self-identifies. Many Deaf people regard their identity as cultural or linguistic rather than as a disability, and some neurodivergent people take a similar view. The Act’s protection and the duty to make adjustments apply either way. The sector’s own language reflects this: initiatives such as the TV Access Project speak of “deaf, disabled and neurodivergent” people, listing them together without collapsing the distinction.
In September 2026 the government’s Office for Equality and Opportunity (previously known as the Equality Hub) published research into delays in reasonable adjustments decisions. Most disabled people who ask for it do receive support: roughly a third get everything they request, and another third get some of it. The problems lie in the process. The research identified five recurring barriers:
Delay was the sharpest theme. The research noted that the average time to process an Access to Work application had risen to 109 working days, against 28 in 2021-22. Separate work cited in the research found almost a quarter of disabled employees waited more than a month for a decision, and around one in ten waited more than three months. Its conclusion was that the framework largely works, and that reform should focus on better guidance rather than new law.
Acas research published in September 2026, carried out by the National Centre for Social Research, looked at why disabled people experience far more workplace conflict than their colleagues. Among those whose condition substantially affects their daily activities, around two-thirds reported conflict at work, a rate well above that of the workforce as a whole. Acas received more than 28,000 disability discrimination early conciliation notifications in 2024-25, close to one in five of all cases and almost double the proportion of a decade ago.
The study tied that conflict to how support is managed rather than to the conditions themselves: ineffective support, adjustments agreed but not delivered or left to drift, a lack of open conversation about needs, and policies applied rigidly without room to consider individual circumstances. The accounts referred to were stark, from a disabled worker moved to a room she described as a cupboard, to an employee threatened with disciplinary action over absences linked to cancer treatment. Conflict of this kind signals that a support process has broken down, and it carries a direct cost in trust, absence and people lost from the workforce.
Sam Tatlow, a wheelchair user and chair of BAFTA’s disability advisory group, speaking to BAFTA“Access has a positive impact on everyone. By not thinking about access you’re actually making everyone’s life more difficult.”
A freelance, project-based workforce means that the person who needs an adjustment is often on a short contract, with no settled HR function to turn to and a new team on each production. An Access to Work decision measured in months fits badly with an engagement measured in weeks. Heads of Department and production managers, not specialist HR staff, are usually the ones who field a request, often under time pressure on set or location. The problem is common: Scope’s polling found that 28% of disabled workers and jobseekers have had an adjustment request refused or an agreed adjustment left unimplemented, rising to 45% of those aged 18 to 34, the age group a sector reliant on new entrants most needs to keep.
The sector has built tools for this. The TV Access Project, and the access rider more broadly, let a deaf, disabled or neurodivergent worker set out the adjustments they need once and carry them from job to job, which suits intermittent engagement far better than starting again each time. WorkWise signposts both, alongside the Film and TV Charity’s information on Access to Work. Using them early, before a shoot begins, turns a reactive scramble into a planned arrangement.
Government policy is moving towards earlier, more consistent support. The Keep Britain Working review, updated in September 2026, is developing a workplace health system built around a Healthy Working Lifecycle: offering a conversation about health and work within the first weeks of a job, discussing issues promptly, agreeing adjustments without delay, and keeping in touch during sickness absence so that a return to work is planned rather than left to chance.
In its September 2026 response to the Work and Pensions Committee, the government backed the direction but not every recommendation. It pointed to its own research in choosing to improve understanding among businesses rather than change the law, and committed to clarifying workplace health provision by the end of 2026, strengthening the Disability Confident scheme and introducing disability pay gap reporting for large businesses when parliamentary time allows. It did not adopt a binding two-week deadline to respond to requests, though the recommendation sets an expectation on timing.
The day-one right to request flexible working, in force since April 2024, matters here too since a flexible arrangement can itself be a reasonable adjustment, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 will further tighten the process for refusing requests from 2027.
The common thread is process, not cost or the law. Screen businesses can reduce both the risk of a claim and the loss of skilled people by handling requests well.
Good practice starts with an honest internal conversation. A business that thinks it may never have engaged a disabled person can ask why, and whether its own ways of working, rather than the talent or skills available, explain it. The next question is simpler: is there a disabled person anywhere in the circle where decisions get made? Where there is not, that absence shapes every later judgement about what counts as reasonable.
In practice, a business can:
WorkWise holds related material that supports this, including its guide to managing sickness absence and fit notes, and its resources on navigating conflict and building HR capability in the sector.
The law here is stable and adjustments often cost little or nothing. The difference comes down to process: a request answered promptly, what is agreed put in place, and the people handling it backed to do so. For a freelance sector that runs on experienced people and the talent it has yet to reach, that process is what keeps skilled people in work.