Disability Discrimination Act

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Conference
2002 National Disabled Members' Conference
Date
3 July 2002
Decision
Carried as Amended

This Conference notes the implementation in October 2004 of the next part of the Disability Discrimination Act. This means that all public buildings should be fully accessible to disabled people and has major implications for UNISON disabled members as employees and for service users. This Conference further notes the failure of Part 3 of the Disability Discrimintion Act to deliver significant improvements to facilities and services in the public and private sectors.

We call upon the National Disabled Members’ Committee, regional disabled members’ committees, disabled activists and all UNISON branches to press employers to ensure they meet their legal obligations by undertaking the following:

1)Contracting recognised organisations of disabled people, for example centres for independent living or access panels, to undertake audits of all buildings, facilities and services to identify access barriers;

2)The access audits should then be used by employers to create and publish a full access action plan;

3)UNISON to produce access audit checklists, in consultation with the Disability Rights Commission, to enable members and stewards to continually identify and monitor potential barriers in buildings, facilities and services and the working environment;

4)The above checklists to be available by the next Disabled Members’ Conference in 2003.