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A senior police officer has told an employment tribunal that he was "victimised" because he is dyslexic.
Ch Insp Phillip Haynes (pictured), 42, of Gloucestershire Police, says he was passed over for promotion after he raised the condition with his bosses.
Mr Haynes claims a letter detailing extra time he needed to pass his superintendent exam prejudiced the promotion board against him.
The force told the hearing in Bristol that they had tried to help Mr Haynes.
Victoria von Wachter, representing Gloucestershire Police, said the force had done a lot to assist Mr Haynes during the selection process.
Mr Haynes, of Newnham-on-Severn, said he first became aware that he might have been dyslexic when he was 12.
After twice failing the interview stage for promotion to inspector, he sought help from a dyslexia expert who wrote to Gloucestershire Police asking for special allowances to be put in place for Mr Haynes in his day-to-day duties and in future interview situations.
Mr Haynes said he thought this communication "caused the [promotion] board members to decide that I was not fit to be a senior police officer".
He said he felt "victimised" after his next promotion application was failed at the paper application stage.
He was also unhappy at subsequently being moved from being an acting superintendent back to being a chief inspector.
The former soldier, who joined the county's constabulary in 1989, said: "I have found my treatment to be extremely distressing."
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From BBC News:
