The ET found that the Claimant was not disabled within the meaning of the EA 2010. The ET found that the impairment of finding it difficult to retain information in her auditory memory did not have a substantial adverse effect on the Claimant's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. An expert's assessment was that this would have a substantial effect on her ability to carry out new activities. However, the Claimant had provided no examples of a situation where her difficulty to retain information in her auditory memory had a substantial adverse effect on her, whether relating to new activities or existing activities. She relied on the fact that she sometimes has to ask for instructions to be repeated but this was common among other non-disabled members of staff. The ET found that this effect did not satisfy the test of being 'substantial'. The Claimant appealed on the basis that the Judge had wrongly rejected the Claimant's evidence of that adverse effect because (1) it was not corroborated by independent evidence, and/or (2) the Claimant had not, particularly in cross-examination, given sufficient examples of how the adverse effect manifested itself.

The EAT dismissed the appeal. The Employment Judge had not imposed any such requirement of corroboration but had made her assessment in the light of all the evidence.