| Disability Discrimination Act 1995 |
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It is still permissible for employers to have reasonable medical criteria for employment, and to expect adequate performance from all employees once any reasonable adjustments have been made. In addition to imposing obligations on employers, the Act places duties on service providers and requires ''reasonable adjustments'' to be made when providing access to goods, facilities, services and premises (Part 3 of the Act). AMENDING LEGISLATION The Act was amended by the following legislation:
The details of the positive duty to promote equality are discussed in Delivering Equality for Disabled People A consultation document on the use of other regulation-making powers can be found here The Equality Act 2006 makes provision for the replacement of the DRC by a new Commission For Equality And Human Rights ( CEHR ), with powers to issue guidance on and enforce all the equality enactments (covering race, sex, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation and age). The CEHR is expected to begin operation in October 2007. PRINCIPLES The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) departs from the fundamental principles of older UK discrimination law (the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976 ). These Acts depend on the concepts of Direct Discrimination and Indirect Discrimination . However, these concepts are insufficient to deal with the issues of disability discrimination. The core concepts in the DDA are, instead:
Reasonable adjustment or, as it is known in some other jurisdictions, 'reasonable accommodation', is the radical concept that makes the DDA so different from the older legislation. Instead of the rather passive approach of indirect discrimination (where someone can take action if they have been disadvantaged by a policy, practice or criterion that a body with duties under the law has adopted), reasonable adjustment is an active approach that requires employers, service providers etc to take steps to remove barriers from disabled people's participation. For example:
The Disability Rights Commission's Codes of Practice give more information to bodies with duties on assessing whether a particular adjustment is reasonable. In general, the factors to consider would include:
Sometimes there may be no reasonable adjustment, and the outcome is that a disabled person is treated less favourably. For example, if a person was not able to understand the implications of entering into a mortgage or loan agreement, and they did not have anyone authorised to act for them, it would not make sense to require a bank or building society to enter into that agreement. The Act therefore permits employers and service providers to justify less favourable treatment (and in some instances failure to make a reasonable adjustment) in certain circumstances. OTHER JURISDICTIONS See Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990 for corresponding USA legislation - though this does not have a positive equality duty. See Ontarians With Disabilities Act for the corresponding legislation in Ontario , Canada . SEE ALSO
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