DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION

DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION

Disability discrimination means treating individuals differently in employment because of their disability, perceived disability, or association with a disabled person. Some examples of disability discrimination may include:

• Discriminating on the basis of physical or mental disability in various aspects of employment, including: recruitment, firing, hiring, training, job assignments, promotions, pay, benefits, lay off, leave and all other employment-related activities.
• Harassing an employee on the basis of his or her disability.
• Asking job applicants questions about their past or current medical conditions or requiring job applicants to take medical exams.
• Creating or maintaining a workplace that includes substantial physical barriers to the movement of people with physical disabilities.
• Refusing to provide a reasonable accommodation to employees with physical or mental disability that would allow them to work.

Harassment occurs when someone treats, taunts, or antagonizes you in a way that makes you feel humiliated or offended. For example, if an employee is consistently teased and called names because of his or her disability there is likely a claim for harassment.

Someone is harassing you if you find their behaviour towards you offensive, frightening, degrading, humiliating or in any way distressing. Examples of harassment could involve nicknames, teasing, name-calling, pulling faces, jokes, pranks or any other behaviour which you find upsetting because of your disability. Even if this behaviour is not deliberately meant to hurt you, it may still count as discrimination if you find it upsetting.

Providers of education must not discriminate against students or applicants by treating them less favourably than students who are not disabled, unless they can justify this treatment. This means that education providers must not:

• refuse to offer a disabled student a place because they are disabled, or offer them a place on less favourable terms than a student who is not disabled
• treat a disabled student less favourably in any aspect of educational life including trips, excursions and extra-curricular activities
• exclude a disabled student from school because of their disability

For example, if a school refuses to take a child who suffers from epilepsy unless she stops having fits, this will count as discrimination.






Disability Discrimination can come in six ways:

1. Direct discrimination: When you treat an employee less favourably than your other staff because of their disability.

2. Indirect discrimination: When you put a practice, policy or rule in place that applies to everyone in the same way, but it has a worse impact on some employees because of their disability.

3. Failure to make reasonable adjustments: When you don’t make reasonable practical changes to help a disabled employee at work.

4. Discrimination arising from a disability: When you treat someone unfavourably because of something that results from their disability.

Still with us? Don’t worry, there are only two more left.

5. Harassment: When you treat an employee in a way that makes them feel humiliated or offended. This includes calling them names or joking about their disability.

6. Victimisation: When you treat an employee badly because they’ve made a complaint of discrimination against you or they’re supporting someone who has.




Impact of Disability Discrimation on lives:

• - Disability-based discrimination is relatively common: 14% of people with disability           between the ages of 15 to 64 reported experience of discrimination in the last year.
• - Younger people (15 to 24 years) reported much higher levels of discrimination than     older people (55 to 64 years) as 20.4% vs 9.4%.
• -The highest levels of discrimination were reported among those with a severe or                profound restriction.
• - People with severe disabilities and intellectual or psychological impairments                     were more likely to report disability-based discrimination: one in four compared to     14% of people with physical impairments.
• - Disability-based discrimination was associated with higher levels of psychological        distress and poorer health.