I am waiting for the result from our disability discrimination tribunal. Ours relates to the 'lack of reasonable adjustments' made by our DS's school for his ASD and also 'discrimination arising from disability' when the school removed tuition after he underperformed in exams due to his anxiety. We didn't employ lawyers and it hasn't been plain sailing at all. The case was thrown out initially as having 'no reasonable prospect of success' but 2 appeals later we got it reinstated. It was heard at the end of November.
We had several problems - the chief of which was that only at tribunal were we told that the they couldn't give the main remedy we wanted of re instating DS on the school roll. (apparently an 'admissions issue') That left the remedies of an apology and policy changes. The judge seemed to regard these as 'lesser' remedies as they were not of 'tangible benefit' to DS to the extent that he warned us if we chose to come back to the tribunal (we didn't have time to finish the hearing on the day) we would be at risk of having costs awarded against us. (So we felt we had to opt to do a final written submission instead.)
Another issue was that we still don't know whether the tribunal will hear the major part of our claim which was made 'out of time'. We set out reasons why it should be (chiefly that the School with held informaton from us) but we don't know if our application to have it heard out of time has been successful. which has meant we have spent a lot of time providing evidence for a claim that the tribunal might not even allow.
Other problem is that the legal test for proving discrimination seems to be much higher than we had understood. We thought there would be a greater emphasis on the School having to prove they didn't discriminate, rather than us proving that they did. For example, in our claim of reasonable adjustments it appeared we had to say what the School should have done and prove how it would have made a difference. Even then, it could be knocked back by the School as being 'unreasonable' - which is obviously a subjective test.
So I really don't know which way our case will go. A finding of discrimination and an apology would be a good result. Can't really judge if it 'was worth it' as I don't know how things would have panned out if we hadn't taken the case. As it is DS is back at the school as a 'visitor' and getting the tuition he missed out on last year - and I think that is only because we made our claim. But,yes, it has definitely been stressful!