How to Stay Within DDA Compliance

The Disability Discrimination Act, which was passed by the UK Parliament in 1995, lays down rules that ensure equal treatment and rights for the disabled. Businesses in particular are required by the DDA to make sure their facilities and services are accessible by those with disabilities. If you own a business or provide a service, staying within the rules of DDA compliance is important to you – you could be fined or suffer other consequences if you do not follow the regulations and are reported for it.

Staying Within DDA Compliance

First and foremost, the DDA requires that you treat disabled people with the same consideration as you do those without disabilities. Even if you are unsure of every detail of how to comply, keeping this rule in mind is important, since it’ll ensure that your intentions are right, and will help you immensely in working towards full compliance. Think about the business or service you offer and, if you suffered from a disability of any kind, how that might affect your capability to use the business or service. Are there changes you can make that would favorably affect that situation?

The following are a few basic guidelines for DDA compliance that any business owner or service provider should know. The DDA breaks non-compliance into these four categories, and any failure to fall within these boundaries means a business could suffer consequences.

• You are not allowed to refuse, or deliberately fail, to serve a customer merely because of a disability.
• You are not allowed to provide a lesser service, or less service, to someone merely because of a disability.
• You are not allowed to “penalize” a disabled customer by offering worse terms or lower standards of service because of their disability.
• You must attempt to make any and all adjustments within reasonable boundaries and do your best to serve a disabled person in spite of their disability.

No business is perfect. Considering all the ways in which a customer might be disabled, and all the things there are to consider and attempt to adjust for accordingly, you shouldn’t expect to cover all situations before they occur. The key thing to remember is that if something regarding your business or service is brought to your attention as being non-compliant with the DDA, or if you notice a shortcoming yourself, you should make every effort to fix it provided you can do so without extremely unreasonable cost or labor. As mentioned above, it’s the intention that will largely matter here, and if you approach DDA compliance with the intention of doing your best to equally serve your disabled customers, you’ll have much more successful results.

Getting Help

To ensure you are within DDA compliance, or to deal with an accused violation, you should contact an experienced attorney. Your lawyer can help you to make sure you do not violate the law and can assist you in dealing with any inadvertent violations that may have occurred.