[Marxism] Disability rights

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

www.redparty.org.uk

Website of the Red Party:
for socialism, humanism, and democracy!
red star 3: december 2004
can't afford to be equal?

the disability discrimination act is supposed to bring equality to the 8.5
million people with physical and mental disabilities in this country but,
as jeremy butler reports, it so full of holes you could drive an electric
wheelchair through it.

The third and final part of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) became
law on 1st October 2004. In theory, the law has far reaching effects.
Supposedly it should ensure that people who have a disability have the same
rights as non-disabled people to access education, employment, public
transport, businesses and services. If any organisation, whether it is a
private business or a public body, is found to be providing an inferior
service, or worse, denying that service altogether to someone because they
have a disability: then they are discriminating against that person and
they are breaking the law. It sounds great, and it should make a real
difference to the lives of the estimated 8.5 million people in the UK who
have a disability. You might well be wondering why there has not been more
fanfare about this. Surely the DDA should be being celebrated as a victory
for equal rights for people with disability. Instead, the DDA has passed
almost without comment. Publicity seems to have been limited to a poster
campaign by Scope, the charity for people with cerebral palsy, and a
handful of articles buried deep within the pages of the liberal press.

Part of the reason for this is that the DDA is simply not good enough. It
does not go far enough to even begin to address the fundamental
inequalities faced by disabled people. The way in which parts of the Act
have been worded is ambiguous and there are a number of potential
get-out-clauses. For example, the Act says that organisations that provide
services have to make "reasonable adjustments" so that people with
disability can access them. But who decides whether an adjustment is
'reasonable' or not? Also, the Act says that the "provider of services"
does not have to do anything that "would cause him to incur expenditure
exceeding the prescribed maximum." So, basically, if it would cost too much
money to make the necessary changes, then they do not have to make those
changes. There is a contradiction here. If something needs to change in
order that people are not discriminated against, then it needs to change,
regardless of how much it costs.

In addition, there are no clear guidelines as to what kind of adjustments
may be needed. It is easy to see that changes are needed to make services
accessible to someone with a physical disability. For example someone with
impaired mobility may well need ramps and more level surfaces in order to
actually enter some buildings and move around them. There is more to it
than that, though: it could mean providing a sign language interpreter for
someone who uses sign language. However, physical impairments are not the
only form of disability. The definition of disability covered by the DDA
also includes people with learning disability, mental health issues and
progressive conditions such as cancer, AIDS and Multiple Sclerosis.

If we turn our attention to learning disability as an example, it is clear
that radical changes are necessary in order to ensure that all services are
accessible. It could mean shops and supermarkets providing a member of
staff to accompany a customer and support them to compare the differences
between products, or to understand the list of ingredients on the backs of
packets. It could mean bus or train companies having to come up with ways
of making it clearer which train or bus a passenger needs to get on, and
when, how long the journey will take, when they need to get off and how
much it will cost. These are just a couple of examples of everyday
situations where services need to make adjustments in order to enable
people with disability to access them.

(clip)


Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


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