This article critically reflects upon the development of British employment equality law, tracking a positive yet hesitant, uneven and incomplete trajectory from anti-discrimination towards equality, and from piecemeal and patchwork coverage towards inclusiveness, integration and intersectionality. It argues that the opportunities provided by the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights and the proposed Single Equality Act should be taken to address remaining weaknesses in the legislative equality package and the limitations in enforcement approaches which the article highlights.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00624.x

The Road is Long: Thirty Years of Equality Legislation in Britain

While equality laws operate to enable access to information, these laws have limited power over the overriding impact of market forces and copyright laws that focus on restricting access to information. Technology now creates opportunities for everyone in the world, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, to be able to access the written word - yet the print disabled are denied reading equality, and have their access to information limited by laws protecting the mainstream use and consumption of information. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the World Intellectual Property Organization's Marrakesh Treaty have swept in a new legal paradigm. This book contributes to disability rights scholarship, and builds on ideas of digital equality and rights to access in its analysis of domestic disability anti-discrimination, civil rights, human rights, constitutional rights, copyright and other equality measures that promote and hinder reading equality.

Discrimination, Copyright and Equality: Opening The E-Book for the Print Disabled

The Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, building on the Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, have been relatively effective in securing enforceable civil rights for disabled students in higher education in the United States. In contrast, the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 and any related previous pieces of legislation have persistently excluded these students in the United Kingdom, making, by default, any discrimination against them legal. However, the Government has started the legislative rule making process to include higher education under the new legislation, based on the final report of the Select Committee on Education and Employment of House of Commons and the final report of the Disability Rights Task Force. The paper argues that close examination of these reports as well as the Government's most recent consultation paper, 'Rights for Disabled People in Education', reveals a path which is unlike the path that followed during the rulemaking process le...

Creating Enforceable Civil Rights for Disabled Students in Higher Education: An institutional theory perspective

Mentally disabled people, such as clinically depressed people, have had difficulties in access to employment and higher education. Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) (1995) has been in force since 2 December 1996, completing the fifth year of its implementation on 2 December 2001 and its stated purpose has included ending of discrimination in access to employment by disabled people among others. The introduction of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) (2001) as well as the Disability Discrimination (Amendment) Bill (DDAB) (2002) has revived the debate on the effectiveness of the DDA in increasing access to employment by disabled people but particularly by mentally disabled people. The paper therefore reviews the law and practice on the employment of clinically depressed people. It is argued that the devised rules on the discrimination tests have not succeeded in ending discrimination against disabled people in access to employment. It is further noted that since the SENDA uses the sim...

Access to Employment by Disabled People in the UK: is the Disability Discrimination Act Working?:

This thesis examines several aspects of the equality and non-discrimination norms in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). A particular focus throughout the thesis is on the manner in which the equality and non-discrimination norms in the CRPD can increase participation and inclusion in society of persons with disabilities. The thesis also examines in detail the duty to reasonably accommodate persons with disabilities and, in particular, its outer limits. The book also devises a framework for review of measures adopted by States in the overall context of the progressive realisation of disability rights. Finally, it investigates how the equality and non-discrimination norms in the Convention have already influenced, and can potentially influence, the crucial shape of disability equality case law and policy. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that the CRPD holds enormous promise for the future application of the equality and non-discrimination norms in relation to the rights of persons with disabilities.

/pdf/the-long-and-winding-road-to-equality-and-inclusion-for-31pxt2zv4w.pdf

The Long and Winding Road to Equality and Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The surprising volte-face epitomised by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA 1995) is the product of a curious concoction of political forces and events. A government, which in the early 1990s had been unwilling to recognise the phenomenon of disability discrimination, had come slowly to a concession of the facts of social exclusion and marginalisation of a sizeable minority.' Recognising the mischief, however, was a necessary but insufficient step towards identifying the remedy. Official policy still clung to the talisman that education and persuasion, rather than legislation, represented the appropriate means to the end of a society within which disabled persons would be fully integrated and afforded equality of opportunity. The emergence of disability rights activism, seeking to emulate the experience of the civil rights movement among disabled Americans in the previous decade, and prepared to use all forms of political and extra-political action to advance its agenda, applied the political pressure for reform. Enthused by the legal advances attained in the United States via its comprehensive civil rights law the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 disabled Britons and their allies rallied to the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bills.2 These private members' measures were a constant goad to a government unwilling to burden businesses with prescriptive regulation but mindful of the cross-party support which the disability rights agenda attracted.' When in May 1994 the then latest version of the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill was defeated by cynical means of parliamentary procedure, little could it be imagined that this damaging setback would be the catalyst for government-sponsored reform. The furore surrounding these events and the reliance upon minority parties of a government riven by Euro-scepticism led to what was proposed to be a limited initiative in law reform. That was certainly the tone of the Green Paper of July 1994, and the White Paper and draft Bill that followed it in January 1995.4 Yet

Brian Doyle

Papers

Enabling Legislation or Dissembling Law? The Disability Discrimination Act 1995