Date of article - 2006
In 1985, over 85% of the population were defined as disabled. This continues to grow with an ageing population.
The Act outlaws discrimination against disabled persons in areas of employment, provision of goods, services and facilities.
Since the introduction of Part 3 of the Act in October 2004, service providers will have to make “reasonable adjustments” to the physical features of their premises or find other methods of overcoming physical barriers to access.
Clients will not wish to spend vast sums of money making alterations to their premises that will rarely, if ever, be used.
What are reasonable adjustments?
It might be to alter or remove the barrier or alternatively to provide a reasonable means of avoiding the feature or to provide another way of providing the service. e.g. to bring the service to the disabled person, either within the building or even to their home.
What is disability?
Disability is defined as “a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out day to day activities”. This goes much further than a person in a wheelchair and will include persons with sight, hearing, speech and mobility impairments. The Disability Discrimination Act is not prescriptive like the building Regulations but will, undoubtedly be influenced by legal precedence.
Whilst the Act is now wholly enforceable, providing you can demonstrate a plan is in place to deal with any barriers to service, the authorities will usually be satisfied.
A Landlord will usually be able to recover from tenants the costs of complying with statute under his lease(s) by means of a service charge.
The Act not only covers barriers within buildings but may also apply to rural features.
Clearly it is not envisaged that disabled people will be able to climb Snowdon without meeting physical barriers but the Act certainly covers visitor centres, rural museums, parks and the like.
The Disability Rights Commission has produced a Code of Practice which outlines some of factors to be taken into account when determining “reasonablesness”. These include the effectiveness, practicality and cost of the proposed measures together with disruption and what other resources have been expended on making adjustments to comply with DDA.
The answers may be simpler than you think.
Contact Kirkby and Diamond who can:
- Carry out an access audit of your premises including an assessment of the nature of your business and clientele.
- Prepare a report outlining the results of the inspection
- Draw up a plan to deal with any physical barriers, either by building work or change of working practices
- Prioritise a scheme of building works required to design out physical barriers and prepare budgets
- Prepare an Access Policy Statement to demonstrate your approach in complying with DDA
- Organise the procurement of any building works and manage the contract