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The Disability Discrimination Act has now been extended to cover provision of services, a move that will affect the public sector in big ways. It may also mean an end to the last form of acceptable discrimination
Access all areas
What’s discrimination? It’s no longer just about treating
someone less favourably for some reason – it’s also about
making sure you don’t make their lives more difficult than they
ought to be.
We all know about discrimination based on sex, age, ethnic background
or sexual orientation. But at long last steps are being taken to try and
address another, less visible form of discrimination – that experienced
in our society by people with disabilities. And it’s here that progress
is being made in finally making these people’s lives less hard.
Disability is a big issue for UNISON, according to Gloria Foran, the union's
national disabled members’ officer. “As a member-led union
this is a priority issue for us, with disabled members organising themselves
across all our 12 regions and with input to all the main policy objectives
of the membership, from Agenda for Change to local Labour Link committees.
We're strongly opposed to all forms of segregation and we'll continue
to challenge any intentions to disadvantage disabled peoples’ rights
to education or jobs.”
But it’s society as a whole that needs to wake up and take notice
of discrimination issues around disability. The figures are stark. The
government says one in seven in the UK population has some form of disability
– that’s just under 10 million people. But only 24% of people
with mental health issues are in employment, for example. And a recent
study by the Disability Rights Commission found 80% of our city centres
offer barriers to disabled people, like too many steps, heavy doors, narrow
entrances and bad layout.
To try and combat this, the government has introduced legislation, the
Disability Discrimination Act, to try and redress the imbalance. October
saw a big milestone when new aspects of the Act became law for the first
time.
That milestone didn’t mean there was no protection for disabled
people previously. Firms couldn’t refuse to serve a disabled person
or provide a lower standard of service because of their disability, unless
this could be “justified,” and service providers were under
obligation to make what are called “reasonable adjustments”
in the way they provided services to disabled people.
Diagnosis and discrimination
But there have been big changes nonetheless. A major feature of the law
now is that for the first time people suffering from cancer, HIV and MS
(multiple sclerosis) are classed as disabled from the time of diagnosis.
This is an important change, because up until now it’s not until
such conditions become visible that people have been protected from discrimination.
This means that employers can’t act unfairly against staff with
these conditions, which the government estimates cover at least 73,000
people.
That’s just one big change. In the public sector there is now a
new duty on public bodies to promote equality of opportunity for disabled
people, in just the same way they’ve been doing for people from
ethnic minorities under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act. (It’s
worth noting that the military, intelligence and secret services are specifically
exempted by the way.)
They were already obliged to prevent discrimination when people with disabilities
were employees or used services. But now, for example, a person with a
hearing disability will have the right for his condition to be taken into
account if being questioned by the police. This also means that disabled
people don’t have to achieve progress just by winning individual
court cases any more; now public bodies have to actively look for ways
to improve their access, for example.
Changes you might see include doors being widened or heightened to allow
better wheelchair access, changes in the way public spaces are painted
(in terms of both colour use and contrast and signage) to make it easier
for people with disabilities to use, making sure gangways are free of
obstructions, more provision of hearing aid loops, and of course more
widespread education and disability awareness training. These moves will
also have to include at some point more provision for people with so-called
hidden disabilities like dyslexia, asthma and epilepsy.
Breaking down the barriers
Other aspects of the new rules: private landlords must now make sure the
accommodation they make available is accessible by disabled people, though
that doesn’t mean they must physically alter the property –
they must consult disabled users.
And transport providers must make access for disabled people possible
wherever “reasonable”. This again is a big change because
disability legislation up until now just covered the transport infrastructure,
now it covers the service offered.
This means we shouldn’t hear about cases like the man using a wheelchair
who found that despite the availability of accessible buses, drivers refused
to stop. Once when the bus did stop, the driver was abusive, pushed his
chair back off the footplate and drove away, says the DRC (see box on
left), the main body for fighting discrimination against the disabled.
These cases should become less and less of an issue, argue supporters
of the Act.
The part of the Act that covers transport has other interesting aspects,
as it covers so-called service delivery – which covers a lot of
things, from public transport to web site accessibility. Cyberspace is
covered even though the stipulations are all about physical access to
services.
So the law’s saying that if there are any physical barriers that
are preventing disabled people from using a service, organisations (be
they a retailer, an ecommerce site or a leisure centre) have to make reasonable
adjustment to make their services more accessible by removing, altering
or helping people avoid these barriers, or where this is not possible,
they should try to provide the service in a reasonable alternative way.
Allied to the fact that the Act now covers all clubs of 25 people or over,
many institutions – from trade unions to places of entertainment
to branches of political parties and so on – now have to start really
taking positive steps to make physical access for disabled people much
easier.
So the new law – often just shortened to the acronym of the DDA
(Disability Discrimination Act) – could have a dramatic impact on
discrimination experienced by disabled people.
Room for stress?
That’s not to say the DDA doesn’t have critics. Mostly these
come down to people feeling not enough conditions are covered, reducing
the scope of protection available under the law.
The TUC, for instance, has also argued that stress-related illness, which
it describes as “a serious and rapidly increasing problem for many
workers,” should have been included in the list of conditions covered
in order to help those employees who have lost out because their employers
have been able to avoid liability under the DDA.
Charities representing those with mental health problems, such as Mind,
say that more protection should be extended to this part of the community.
And many commentators wonder how much fun the lawyers will have with the
definition of “reasonable,” implying there might be little
actual change if lip service is paid to improvements.
UNISON shares some of these concerns. “We've heard mixed views about
the DDA. We welcomed it, recognised its limitations, but still we use
it to protect people from disability discrimination at work. Still, have
a piece of legislation that, unlike other equality legislation, makes
people prove their status as a disabled person before they can go on to
argue the case for discrimination,” adds Foran.
Nonetheless she says the new extensions offer a step forward at long last.
Not least, this means that disabled people should at long last start getting
better opportunities to take part in the political process itself, as
political parties are now also covered by the law, and must open up their
doors too.
“Access to public life is a very important issue and we'll be monitoring
developments to ensure that disabled people have the same opportunities
to become involved in public affairs such as tribunals and magistrates
courts, governing bodies of schools, local councils and any other appointments
that are open to the public,” says Foran.
Let’s hope the passing of the DDA means discrimination against the
disabled will join discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or age where
it belongs – on the scrapheap.
Story by Gary Flood and Nathalie Towner
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