Disability Discrimination Act

This act prevents discrimination again people with disabilities.!

It covers housing, transport, enployment, access to education and obtaining goods and services.

This act is constantly being reviewed.

Many of the provisions related to enployment of disabled persons came into force on 1st December 1998.

This act does not apply to prision officers, fire fighters, police officers, members of the armed forces, peole working on aboard ship, aircraft and hovercraft.

It includes permanent, temporary and contract workers as well as full time employees.

Enployers must not discriminate against an enployee with a disability or who has had a disabilty in the past.

The employment tribunal can:

make a declaration about the rights of the disabled employee

order the employer to pay compensation to the disabled enployee

recommened that the employer take reasonable action within certain period of time to prevent or reduce any disadvantage to the disabled person or to make reasonable adjustments.

Amongst other things this part of the act relates to adjustments service providers have to make to ensure access by disabled people to their services.

This includes for example providing poor sighted people with information in large print, braille or tape, or hard of gearing people with written information or providing wheelchair access and allowing guide dogs onto premises.