Disabled Access: to boldly go where everyone has gone before

…where everyone has gone before.

You might recognise the slogan as a variation on Star Trek’s “To Boldly go where no one has gone before”. It used to be “To boldly go where no man has gone before”, but it was recognised that excluding women was backward thinking, and didn’t refelct a more equal society. But it seems that in the cinemas, that equal society does not extend to disabled people.

A disabled cinema goer from Streatham, has found it impossible to boldly go as far as his local cinema to see a Star Trek film.
His local movie house – the Streatham Odeon – has twiced asked him to leave on the basis that his wheelchair is a “fire hazard”.
This is from a cinema chain whose turnover is 2008 was over £11,000,000, they are a major concern, and should know better.

It seems that the Governement still has a great deal of work to do in educating business owners.

Although disabled people might argue that after 14 years of the Disability Discrimination Act, and 10 years where service providers had to remove physical barriers to disabled people’s access, the time has come for the Government to take a more active policing apporach, and not just rely on the good will of businesses or the commitment of disabled individuals to take a business to Court to try to get equal access.

Two recent legal decisions will have a massive impact on disabled people’s rights, and they pull in opposite directions.

Firstly, and distressingly, the Law Lords in a majority decision have overturned the Court of Appeal decision in Malcolm v Lewisham.

The shocking thing is the grounds on which they have overturned it, which runs roughshod over judgements from other case law, and it now seems it will be almost impossible to have a successful disability defence to a repossession order. But this has a much wider impact than just housing law, and calls into question employment side judgements too.

As I understand it, past case law meant you compare the disabled person with themselves if they didn’t have the impairment to find out if there was disability-related discrimination, whereas this decision says you compare the person with a non-disabled person.

The question in Malcolm then, according to the Law Lords is – would a non disabled person have had a repossession order for breaking the tenancy agreement in this way?(yes) If so, then Malcolm is not protected by the law. Which pretty much renders that part of the law meaningless. It seems to overturn a body of case law arising from decisions on long-term absence, absense to do with medical appointments etc.

The bottom line is it severely weakens disabled people’s protection under the law.

At the other end of the spectrum, European Law Lords have this week found in favour of Coleman – this was a case where a non-disabled mother of a disabled son had extra time off to care for her son and was sacked for it. The European Court say she should have protection from this under the law, on the grounds of “discrimination by association”.
Is it possible now that carers of disabled people will have greater rights under the DDA then disabled people themselves?