Online Solicitor

The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to treat a person less favourably on the grounds of them being disabled. Unlawful practises obviously cover recruitment and employment, but also include harassment and discrimination against the carers of disabled persons.

Harassment under the DDA involves a disabled person being subject to unwanted conduct based on their disability, which violates their dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them, for reasons relating to their disability. This conduct may even be unintentional, though in these cases all the circumstances be reasonable; innocent comments taken the wrong way by an oversensitive person will likely not be judged as harassment.

Carers for people with disability can also claim under the DDA in situations where they are harasses or discriminated against for reasons associated with their role as a carer. Refusing to give some reasonable flexibility in working hours to a mother who has to care for a disabled son, for example, could well be considered unlawful under the DDA.

Disabled persons and carers alike should seek help from employment solicitors if they feel they have been discriminated aginst in either of these manners.