The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) was first introduced in 1995 and has had several updates. It covers Employment, Provision of Goods and Services and Education.
The DDA makes it against the law to discriminate against a disabled person in all areas of employment:
From October 2004, every employer, regardless of their size, will be covered by the DDA. See here to find more about the updates to the DDA in October 2004.
These are the forms of discrimination outlawed by the DDA:
Employers have "a duty of reasonable adjustment" to disabled staff or applicants where a policy, practise or physical feature puts them at a substantial disadvantage.
Examples could be changing working hours to make them more flexible, additional training, adapting duties or purchasing adaptive equipment.
Many reasonable adjustments are inexpensive or free, just requiring an open and supportive attitude. Government funding is available for adjustments that do have cost implications, often covering the majority, or all of the costs. This is called Access to Work.
Often adjustments can also benefit all staff members, for example as in flexible working hours.
This is more complicated than it sounds. Reasonableness has 6 aspects:
Employers need to ask themselves "what can be reasonably done to help make this a level playing field for this person".
Very often, the person themselves will be able to tell you what these are and how they could be done.
There are also many organisations that are able to offer free advice and help around this area. Please click here for details of help available in Warwickshire.
Due to the imminent change to the DDA, this page explains the law as it will be from October 1st, 2004.
This page is only intended as a simple introduction. For a thorough explanation of employers duties under the DDA, please see the Disability Rights Commission's website, particularly:
This section only focuses on the Employment provisions of the DDA. For information on the DDA in relation to the Provision of goods and services and Education, please see the Disability Rights Commission website.