Legal Aspects

Our services to users with disabilities have to conform to legal requirements. The main legislation is the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 (often referred to as the DDA). Part IV of the Act dealt with education and was amended and strengthened by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act of 2001 (often referred to as SENDA). The 1995 Act was supplemented by the Disability Discrimination Act of 2005, which, amongst other provisions, widened the definition of disability to include cancers, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and HIV/AIDS; it also imposed upon public institutions a positive obligation to promote their services to disabled people.

Some important features of this legislation are:

Definition of Disability

Definition of disability according to the act: 'a person has a disability for the purposes of this Act if he has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities'.

'Substantial' means not minor or trivial, and 'long-term' means that it has lasted or is likely to last for at least 12 months.

Discrimination

To quote SENDA:

'It is unlawful for the body responsible for an educational institution to discriminate against a disabled student in the student services it provides, or offers to provide.'

According to David Uzzell, Professor of Environmental Psychology, University of Surrey, this means that discrimination can occur in two ways:

'When a responsible body treats a disabled person less favourably for a reason relating to the person's disability than it treats (or would treat) a person to whom that reason does not, or would not, apply and that treatment cannot be justified.

When a responsible body fails to make a reasonable adjustment when a disabled student is placed, or likely to be placed, at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with a person who is not disabled.'

Reasonable Adjustments

The institution must anticipate what reasonable adjustments it should make so as not to discriminate. According to Penny Holland, Head of Customer Service, Plymouth University Library:

'There is the defence of reasonableness. This might include cost in relation to available resources; impact on whole student group; academic standards; health and safety; responsibility only to those who have disclosed; other aids or services available'.

Disclosure

An institution has to take reasonable steps to ensure that students and staff can disclose their disability, and once disclosure has taken place it has no excuse not to make reasonable adjustments. Disclosure to one person in the institution generally means disclosure to all, and evidence of disability is not necessary before adjustments have to be made. However, information disclosed in certain clinical / counselling situations remains confidential. The full implications of this feature of the legislation have yet to be worked out. Watch this space!

We have taken some of the information here from online papers by Professor David Uzzell and Penny Holland. Links to them are given in the Resources section. There are also links to the full texts of the Acts, plus a quiz on the legislation from SKILL. Complete that successfully, and you'll be as much an expert on the legislation as a lay person can be!