Legislation
Disability Descrimination Act 1995 - Part 1
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LEGISLATION AND THE TRADER
We have been invited by the Cirencester Chamber of Commerce to write a series of articles relating to the rights of disabled people and businesses.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 [DDA] is the first real piece of UK legislation to address the issue of discrimination against disabled people.
The Act makes unlawful discriminatory treatment in relation to employment [part 11] the provision of goods and services [part 111] the selling, letting or managing of land or premises [part 111] transport and its infrastructure [part V]. There are obviously other parts to the ‘Act’ but for the purposes here we will ignore them to save complications.
Prior to the 1995 Act, the only previous legislation relating specifically to the rights of disabled people dates from the 1940s. The Disabled Persons [Employment] Act 1944 and the Disabled Persons [Employment] Act [Northern Ireland] 1945. The DDA replaces the provisions of these Acts almost entirely. The only remaining connection between the DDA and the 1940’s legislation is that anyone registered as ‘disabled’ under the old legislation on both January 12 1995 and December 2 1996 is automatically covered by the 1995 Act for a period of three years, up until December 2 1999, even if these ‘registered’ peoples impairment does not comply with the new definition of ‘disability’ contained within the provisions of the 1995 Act. These date could be important if there is a ’doubt’ as to whether a ’service user’ is a genuine disabled person within the definition contained within the ‘1995 Act‘.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is a long, involved and complicated piece of legalisation which after twelve years we are still trying to un-wrangle. The ’Act’ is divided into eight parts but we will restrict our articles to Parts 1, 2, 3 and 5. Part 1 concerns the definition of the word ‘disability’, Part 2 employment and importantly, insofar as far as our articles are concerned, Part 3 which relates to the provision of goods, services and facilities, selling or letting of premises or land and Part 5 which deals with transport systems and their infrastructure. There must surely be members of the Chamber of Commerce that are involved in at least one of these parts.
In April 2000, The Disability Rights Commission [DRC] was set up to cover the whole of Great Britain, but not Northern Ireland, who set up the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland at the same time. The DRC was set up to work towards eliminating discrimination against disabled people and to promote equalisation of opportunities for disabled people. They also provide information and advice to disabled people, employers and service providers, help to resolve disputes in regard to access to goods and services and investigate discrimination and ensure compliance with the law. The DRC have already featured in several high profile cases involving airlines, airports and large departmental stores. So far all cases taken on by the DRC have been settled out of court.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 has been phased in over a period of time with the ‘employment’ provisions coming into force on December 2 1996, and ‘education’ [in England, Scotland and Wales] and the ‘transport provisions’ having been phased in over time. The remaining parts of the ‘Act’ came fully into force in October 2006.
The first set of rights under the ‘goods and services’ part of the DDA came into force in December 1996 with the remaining provisions of Part 3 being implemented in two stages. From December 1996 it has become unlawful to treat a disabled person less favourably for a reason related to that person’s disability [unless it can be justified]. From October 1999, ‘service providers’ have had to remove physical features that make it impossible or ‘unreasonably’ difficult for disabled people to use a service or provide that service by a reasonable alternative method. By 2004, ‘service providers’ should have taken all ‘reasonably’ steps to eliminate by removing, altering or making ’reasonable’ means of avoiding, physical features that makes it impossible or ‘unreasonably’ difficult for disabled people to use a service.
So far, there is no definition of the word ‘reasonable’ insofar as the DDA is concerned, as no ‘service users’ have complained of discrimination on the grounds of a ‘service provider’ failing to provide ‘reasonable’ access that has reached the courts.
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