Disability

Disability Equality Scheme

In 2005, the Disability Discrimination Act was amended to create a positive duty on public authorities to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people.

This legal duty means that any public body will need to actively look at ways of ensuring that disabled people are treated equally and to be proactive in ensuring that disabled people are treated fairly.

The Disability Equality Duty is a new way for public authorities to tackle disability discrimination in a practical way by introducing policies that actively promote opportunities and so prevent discrimination taking place.

The basic requirement for a public authority when carrying out their functions is to have due regard to do the following:

• promote equality of opportunity between disabled people and other people

• eliminate discrimination that is unlawful under the Disability Discrimination Act

• eliminate harassment of disabled people that is related to their disability

• promote positive attitudes towards disabled people

• encourage participation by disabled people in public life; and

• take steps to meet disabled people’s needs, even if this requires more favourable treatment

More favourable treatment recognises that equality of opportunity for disabled people cannot be achieved by simply treating disabled and non-disabled people the same. Public authorities have a duty to provide reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled people are not put at a ‘substantial disadvantage’ in relation to non-disabled people at work and when using services. Positive action may be necessary to ensure ‘equality of outcomes’ is achieved.

The Act also introduced specific statutory duties on public authorities to produce and publish a Disability Equality Scheme, to implement the action plan contained within the scheme and to report on progress against the plan.

Cardiff University’s first Disability Equality Scheme is available as a word document at the right-hand side of this page. The Disability Equality Scheme forms part of an over-arching University Equality and Diversity Strategy and Policy which aims to embed the promotion of equality and diversity across all activities of the University. The scheme explains how the University will work to meet the objective of embedding disability equality within University culture and working practices over the next three years. It also outlines the processes by which the success of the scheme will be monitored so as to ensure that consistent progress is made towards the development of a University community which is genuinely inclusive of disabled people.

If you require the Disability Equality Scheme and the Action Plan in Braille or large print, please contact Catrin Morgan (E&D Manager) 029 2087 0230 MorganCA5@cf.ac.uk