Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
The Equality Act (which replaced the Disability Discrimination Act) affects the way you treat your staff, job applicants and customers. Under the Equality Act, small and medium-sized businesses have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ so they do not discriminate against disabled customers.
The law has been designed so that you only have to make reasonable changes, but if you fail to do what is reasonable, a disabled person could take legal action against you for treating them unfairly. It could be based on a policy or a one-off action.
What is ‘reasonable’ for my business?
To operate within the law, you should consider the following when deciding what sort of change is likely to be reasonable for your company:
Type of business
Annual turnover
Cost of the adjustment
Disruption to the business while the work is being carried out
Practicality of carrying out the adjustment
Potential benefits to disabled customers
What is reasonable depends on a number of factors, including the resources available to the organisation making the adjustment.
The Equality Act states that you must not treat disabled customers unfairly, no matter what size your company is. If your organisation is not accessible to disabled people, you could be missing out on a lot