Dyslexia Update

What is the Law?

The Disability Discrimination Act (1995) gives people with disabilities the right to be protected from discrimination in employment and in receiving goods and services. People significantly affected by dyslexia will normally be covered by the law.

Employers and service providers need to ensure that they do not discriminate against people because of a disability. This means that they are required to make "reasonable adjustments" and ensure that employees and customers are not "substantially disadvantaged". It is not enough to treat everybody in the same way if this disadvantages people with a disability.

The DDA applies to all employment-related areas, such as recruitment, training, redundancy, promotion and dismissal. Since October 2004, it has also included all types of employers and businesses, including public employers and small businesses.

The Disability Equality Duty for the Public Sector

From December 2006, the DDA will be amended to place a duty on all public bodies to promote disability equality. This will affect all public bodies - from local councils to government departments, from universities to hospitals.

The Disability Equality Duty will require the public sector to actively promote disability equality, and is similar to the duty to promote race equality under the Race Relations Act.

This is a positive duty which builds in disability equality at the beginning of the process, rather than adding adjustments at the end. It will bring about a shift from a legal framework which relies on individual disabled people complaining about discrimination to one in which the public sector becomes a proactive agent of change.

Dyslexia and the workplace: read an article written by Heather Hardie, one of our directors. [71k]

[You will need Adobe Reader to view or download the PDF article. To get the latest version of Adobe Reader click here.]