The United Kingdom - Equality Act, 2010
Whom Does This Apply To?
In the United Kingdom, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which was later replaced by the Equality Act of 2010, set forth numerous regulatory requirements for service providers and employers with respect to persons with disabilities. Under the Act, a service provider is very widely defined as anyone providing a service to the public or to a segment of the public, whether they do so for a fee or not. A protected person is a person "anyone who has, or has had, a disability." Essentially, the Act mandates that all service providers make their service available to persons with disabilities in a manner which they can access.
What Are My Responsibilities?
The service provider must not discriminate against or offer a worse quality of service to any person as a direct result of their disability, as a result of a condition arising from their disability or indirectly resulting from their disability.
Furthermore, it is unlawful for a service provider to treat someone badly because they have lodged a complaint under the Act, or helped someone else to make a complaint, or because the service provider believes that they may in future.
It is therefore the responsibility of the service provider to ensure that the service they provide, including their information services and the way in which they communicate with their clients, is fully accessible and that they do not offer different levels of service to disabled persons than they do to non-disabled persons.
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