Disability Discrimination
The Equality Act 2010 protects the rights of people with a disability to ensure that they have the same rights as a person without a disability. The Act applies in many situations, from employment to transport, from property to education. The Act also means that education providers (including schools, colleges and universities) must not discriminate against someone with a disability, and must support people with disabilities within education. It also means that education providers must give appropriate help and support to students and potential students with disabilities.
Rather than including a list of conditions and disabilities that are covered, the Equality Act 2010 looks at the impact of a condition to determine whether it is a disability for any particular individual. A person is considered to have a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Substantial means not trivial or minor, and long-term normally means for at least 12 months. Day-to-day activities include things like getting around your home or workplace without any great difficulty, being able to remember and concentrate on your work, and to get on with being a member of the family, a friend, a colleague or a commuter just like anyone else.
Discriminating against a person who has, or is perceived to have, a physical or mental impairment of some kind is illegal, but could happen at any stage of a person's contact with the council even inadvertently. This could be as a service user, job interviewee, current employee, elected member or visitor from a partner organisation and so the Council must ensure that access to its buildings and services, both physical and communications-wise is as broad as possible.
Caerphilly County Borough Council has already made a number of alterations to its buildings to make them fully accessible and will continue to undertake this work. The council is fully committed to the following:
- To lower reception counters, switches and other equipment to make them accessible for wheelchair users (whether public or staff).
- To provide a reasonable alternative method if physical barriers prove unreasonably difficult to overcome. For example, we will meet you on the ground floor or another appropriate place if an upstairs meeting room is not yet accessible.
- To make arrangements for members of the public who have to stand in a queue.
- To providing disabled parking spaces.
- To make provision to supply people with visual impairments or dyslexia with information in a more user-friendly format, for example, on audio tape.
- To ensure that people with learning difficulties are never refused service or made to suffer a lesser service because of their disability;
- To provide British Sign Language (BSL) Interpreters for meetings, on request.
- To ensure that a disabled person does not have to pay more for a service than an able bodied person.
- To provide buildings with the correct type of lighting and take steps to provide information in a user-friendly format, such as large print, audio, Braille for those with visual impairments.
- To provide induction loop facilities in reception and other public areas, to make use of email, text phones, BT Typetalk, or fax for people who are deaf, deafened or hard-of-hearing.
Information on BSL can be found at the RNID website and on our Linguistic Skills page.
As of the 1 April 2011, the council no longer has a specific Disability Equality Scheme, but has included its Disability commitments in the council's first Strategic Equality Plan.
To find out more about what the council is doing to comply with the DDA, please contact equalities@caerphilly.gov.uk.
Caerphilly County Borough Access Group
Caerphilly county Bbrough Access Group is a registered charity that works closely with Caerphilly County Borough Council on a range of issues, such as carrying out audits of workplaces, scrutinising planning applications and investigating complaints about pavement obstructions throughout the county borough.
For more information about the Group or any requests for advice, services or membership of the group, please contact:
Caerphilly County Borough Access Group
c/o The Secretary
5 Pen-y-cae
Mornington Meadows
Caerphilly. CF83 3BS
Tel: 029 2086 5657
Email: CCBAGsecretary@hotmail.com