Online Solicitor

Archive for September, 2009

The Disability Discrimination Act defines a disabled person as someone who has “a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities”. Given the importance of adhering to the DDA, here is a brief insight into this definition.
By “substantial and long-term adverse effect”, we are to understand that the disability does not necessarily have to be severe to class as disabling, but must be more an a trivial injury and likely to last more than a year.

By “normal day-to-day activities”, we are to understand that the disability must affect one of the following: mobility; manual dexterity; physical co-ordination; continence; ability to lift, carry or otherwise move everyday objects; speech, hearing or eyesight; memory or ability to concentrate, learn or understand; or perception of the risk of physical danger.

From the above explication, it should be clear that the DDA definition of “disabled” includes both physical and mental impairment. Mental impairment includes all recognised mental illnesses and learning difficulties, whereas physical impairment includes adverse changes to a part of the body caused through illness, by accident or from birth. This includes long-term health conditions, progressive conditions and conditions affecting the senses. Examples include people with diabetes, multiple sclerosis, HIV and cancer, as well as people with sight, hearing and mobility impairments.

Knowing what counts as a disability is integral to adhereing to lawful conduct under the DDA. For more help and advice, seek out employment solicitors.

Anybody that has ever picked up a tabloid, or had one thrust into their hand outside a tube station, will have read about extreme cases of religious discrimination in the workplace. Oftentimes these stories are deliberately picked for their controversial nature, yet written as if events of this magnitude are commonplace example of religious discrimination. This is not the case; religious discrimination is a genuine concern for employers because it is not always as obvious as the cases we hear about in the news – most the time it is subtler and difficult to resolve without an understanding of what it is and what should be done about it. In the next couple of posts I hope to clarify some issues relating to this type of discrimination in the workplace, in the hope that it will be of some use to employers and employees alike.

Religious discrimination poses a problem for employers; they cannot make employment decisions based on an employee’s religion, but yet they must take employee’s religious beliefs into account when making business decisions. Cases of religious discrimination often occur when a workplace rule directly contradicts a religious practice, putting religious employees at a detriment to other workers. In cases like these, the employer has limited options; they can change the business practice to accommodate religious rules, or they can refuse to change the business practice on the grounds that it is a proportionate way of achieving a business goal. Both options require detailed consideration as well as insight into what the law demands from employers and employees.

In my next post I will examine these issues by giving some examples of how employers are expected to deal with religious practices that can conflict with business rules, without getting on the wrong side of employment solicitors.

Did you know that around 20% of the UK workforce have disabilities, yet they find it thrice as hard to secure employment? Given the fact that most disabled people can work without any (or very little) special assistance, the Disability Discrimination Act is in place to make it unlawful to discriminate against disabled people in recruitment and employment. Discrimination under the DDA comes in two forms; direct discrimination and disability-related discrimination; understanding the differences can help both employers and employees.

Direct discrimination under the DDA occurs when am employer treats a disabled person less favourably than a non-disabled person, purely on the grounds of their disability. There is no defence of justification for direct discrimination under the DDA and hence it should not be confused with disability related discrimination, which can be justified.

Disability related discrimination makes up the majority of disability discrimination tribunals and is to do with treating people less favourably for reasons to do with how their disability manifests itself. If the employer can show that making reasonable adjustments to cater for a disability is not reasonable or practical, then the court can rule that there is substantial reason for treating the personal differently.