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Not letting workers turn their cameras off while on Zoom or Teams calls can amount to disability discrimination, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Some workers can feel “anxious” or “overwhelmed” when their cameras are on, and employers could be liable to pay them damages, according to the judgment.

The ruling was given in the case of travel consultant Laura Tait, who successfully sued her company because she was told she must join a meeting with her camera on.

Ms Tait, who has anxiety, said the directive made her feel “overwhelmed”.

She was told to “start with [the camera] on and to see how she went”, but she could not cope and had to leave the meeting.

It was found that her employer failed to provide her with a number of “reasonable adjustments” – a type of disability discrimination – including the “ability to join meetings with camera off” and letting her do fewer voice calls in the course of her day-to-day work.

Laura Tait worked from home for the Holiday Extras call centre (Getty Images)

The employment tribunal, held in Croydon, heard that Ms Tait worked for Holiday Extras as a travel consultant from June 2021, selling insurance policies.

Ms Tait worked from home for the company’s call centre.

The majority of her work, about 80 per cent, involved voice calling customers. The rest of the time, she could communicate with them via email or live chat.

In April 2022, she told her manager that she had better energy levels when doing live chat work, and that the stress of other work had been causing “absences related to her anxiety”, according to the tribunal’s ruling.

Her absences increased from November 2022, and in April 2023 she asked for “emergency time off” because of “burn out”.

In July that year, she told a new line manager that “the only thing that would help” would be doing more live chat and email shifts, but she was told that “she could not be scheduled more chats and emails than average due to fairness and workloads”.

She was told that her bosses “would absolutely try and put her on chats/emails every week where possible”.

After more discussions, she was not given any permanent adjustments which would enable her to do fewer voice calls.

She then attended a remote training session in August 2023.

The tribunal was told: “On 24 August 2023 [Ms Tait] was doing a remote training session by video and asked to have her camera off as she felt 'super anxious'.

“She was asked to start with it on and to see how she went. However, she was not able to cope and so she was told that was fine and to log off.”

She was signed off sick in October 2023 with work related stress and anxiety, and has not returned to work since then.

In April 2024, she complained that she had been discriminated against because her adjustment requests had not been granted.

Her grievance was dismissed in October, and her appeal against the decision was not granted.

She was granted a limited number of adjustments that month, including having her “camera off in meetings”.

As a result of several reasonable adjustments not being made, Ms Tait had “significant sickness absences”, the tribunal found.

On the video call incident, Employment Judge Liz Ord said: “[Holiday Extras] did not allow the requested adjustment on 24 August 2023, when they were first made aware of [Ms Tait] being overwhelmed.

”However, they did not require her to come on camera thereafter and [the COO] formally agreed to the adjustment on 4 October 2024.

”Nonetheless, we take the view that the adjustment was reasonable and should have been put in place from 24 August 2023.”

The judge added that Ms Tait was left with “substantial disadvantages in the workplace” because of the company’s failure to make reasonable adjustments.

The compensation Ms Tait will receive is going to be decided at a later date.

Some other claims which she made for failures to provide reasonable adjustments were dismissed.