Discrimination and disclosure
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| Discrimination and disclosure |
The reasonable adjustment duty in Part 3 of the
DDA is a duty to disabled people at large and applies whether or not the
service provider knows that a particular person is disabled, and so knowledge
is irrelevant. However, under Parts 2 and 4, when making reasonable adjustments
for staff and students, education institutions can only discriminate if they
know, or can be reasonably expected to know, that someone is disabled. Parts 2
and 4 therefore effectively require that education institutions are proactive
in encouraging people to disclose, which means that they must take reasonable
steps to find out whether someone is disabled. How to best encourage disclosure
is an issue which will be returned to in Section 3, but it is important to
remember that all disabled people (and particularly those with an unseen
impairment) are far more likely to feel confident in disclosing this if the
organisation they are entering has a positive and welcoming approach towards
disabled people.
Under the DDA Parts 2 and 4, once one member of
staff knows about a person’s impairment or health condition, and explicit
consent has been obtained to share this information with others, then it is up
to the organisation to have effective channels of communication to pass this
information to relevant staff. Both direct and disability-related
discrimination can take place without the organisation knowing that someone is
disabled within the meaning of the Act. Staff training about both the DDA and
Disability Equality Duty duties will help to ensure that such types of
discrimination do not take place.
Further information about direct discrimination,
disability-related discrimination and making reasonable adjustments can be
found in the DDA Codes of Practice. See Appendix A.
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