Category: News | Published: 2026-08-06
Most managers running video meetings have come across someone who keeps their camera off. It can feel awkward, and some teams have adopted blanket policies requiring cameras on during calls. A recent UK employment tribunal ruling suggests those policies need more careful thought than many employers have given them.
The case involved a remote working travel consultant whose employer insisted she turn her camera on during a training session. She had asked to keep it off. The tribunal found that refusing that request was discriminatory. The headlines that followed suggested employers could no longer ask staff to use cameras at all — but that is not quite what the ruling says, and the nuance matters considerably.
What the Case Was About
Laura Tait worked as a home-based travel consultant for Holiday Extras. Her role involved supporting customers primarily by telephone, alongside email and live chat. Ms Tait has anxiety, ADHD and autism, and over the course of her employment had told managers on multiple occasions that written communication was considerably less demanding for her than telephone and video interactions.
She had requested a number of adjustments over time: a higher proportion of chat and email work, and permission to keep her camera off during online meetings when she needed to. Some temporary support measures had been put in place, including phased returns and reduced hours during periods of difficulty.
The incident that led to the tribunal claim happened during a remote training session on 24 August 2023. Feeling, in her own words, super anxious, Ms Tait asked whether she could keep her camera switched off. She was told to start with it on and see how she went. She was unable to cope and left the session, later going on long-term sick leave with work-related stress and anxiety.
What the Tribunal Decided
The employment tribunal did not conclude that Holiday Extras had been entirely unsupportive. Temporary measures had been put in place at various points, and the employer had engaged with Ms Tait's situation to some degree.
However, Employment Judge Liz Ord found that longer-term adjustments that would have reduced the disadvantage Ms Tait experienced had not been implemented, despite being reasonable and practical. The specific finding on the training session was clear: the employer had not allowed the requested adjustment on 24 August 2023, when they were first made aware that she was overwhelmed, and that adjustment was reasonable and should have been put in place.
The tribunal also found that the balance of Ms Tait's work — too heavily weighted towards telephone calls for a person with her conditions — should have been adjusted to make greater use of chat and email. The employer's argument that this would be operationally difficult was not accepted, given that the team consisted of more than fifty travel consultants and the adjustment could have been accommodated without significant disruption.
Not every request Ms Tait made was upheld. A proposal for a one-hour transition period when moving from chat work back to telephone was rejected because the tribunal accepted that the operational impact of that particular adjustment would be too great. The ruling was therefore not a blanket endorsement of every adjustment an employee might request.
What This Ruling Does Not Mean
This is the point that several news reports handled poorly, and it is worth being direct about it.
The tribunal did not rule that employers cannot ask remote workers to use cameras. It did not establish a new legal right to keep cameras off in any meeting. What it applied was a well-established principle under the Equality Act 2010: employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for employees whose disabilities place them at a substantial disadvantage compared with colleagues who do not have those disabilities.
The ruling was specific to Ms Tait's circumstances — her diagnosed conditions, the history of communications with her employer, the nature of her role, and the size of the team she worked within. Another employee in a different role or organisation, raising the same request without the same medical background and documented history, would not automatically be entitled to the same outcome.
What the case does confirm is that remote working practices are now subject to the same legal scrutiny as physical workplace adjustments. Adapted workstations, accessible buildings, specialist equipment — these have long been understood as areas where reasonable adjustments must be considered. Video meeting requirements, communication channel policies, and the balance of tasks in a remote role are now in the same conversation.
Why Remote Working Makes This More Complex
For much of the history of disability employment law, reasonable adjustments were predominantly about physical environments. Remote working has shifted the boundaries of what constitutes a workplace, and with that shift comes new territory for what constitutes a disadvantage and what adjustments might address it.
For some employees, remote working itself is the adjustment — it removes the sensory demands of a busy office, the commute, the unpredictability of in-person interaction. For others, the digital tools that remote working relies on create their own barriers. Video calls, for people with certain anxiety conditions, neurodivergent profiles, or sensory sensitivities, can be genuinely exhausting in ways that are difficult to convey to a manager who does not experience them.
The tribunal accepted that appearing on camera placed Ms Tait at a substantial disadvantage compared with colleagues who did not face the same difficulties. That is the legal threshold, and once it is met, the employer's obligation to consider reasonable adjustments is triggered.
What Employers Running Remote Teams Should Take From This
The practical message for businesses is not that camera-on policies are unlawful. It is that those policies need to be applied with individual circumstances in mind rather than as a uniform rule that admits no exceptions.
When an employee raises a concern about a remote working practice — whether it is camera use, the channel they are asked to communicate through, the pace of transitions between different task types, or something else — that concern should be treated as a potential reasonable adjustment request rather than a preference to be managed. It does not mean automatically agreeing to everything asked. It means genuinely evaluating whether the adjustment is practical, what the operational impact would be, and documenting that evaluation.
Temporary support measures, which Holiday Extras did implement at various points, are valuable but are not a substitute for considering whether a longer-term adjustment is needed. The tribunal's finding was partly that short-term accommodations had not led to a proper assessment of what would reduce the ongoing disadvantage Ms Tait experienced.
For businesses building remote working policies, the clearest takeaway is this: any rule about how remote employees must present themselves or communicate should have a clear process for employees to request exceptions on health or disability grounds, and a genuine process for evaluating and responding to those requests.
If you want to make sure your remote working infrastructure and policies are set up in a way that supports your team effectively and keeps you on the right side of employment law, our Managed IT Services page is a good starting point for that conversation.