Disability Duty & Transport Rights
The Disability Equality Duty (DED) will affect around 45,000 bodies in the way they plan and deliver services to disabled people.
The new requirements are designed to ensure that public agencies become more proactive in ensuring that their services meet the needs of the 10 million people in the
Public Transport
Disabled people also now have new rights in relation to public transport. They must be treated fairly and have the right to "reasonable adjustments" on buses, coaches, trains and taxis. Significantly, the new transport duties do not cover shipping or air travel - something that the Disability Rights Commission would like to see included in future legislation.
Visibility
Bodies including the NHS, local councils and government departments will have to publish a plan showing how they intend to meet their Disability Equality Duty obligations. Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton described the DED as "ground-breaking".
The duty is similar to the race equality duty introduced in April 2001. Mr. Hutton said it was a step on the route to the government's vision of achieving equality for disabled people by 2025.
Barriers
Mr. Hutton commented: "Discrimination of any sort is unacceptable, yet the truth is that many disabled people still face barriers in all walks of life which prevent them from reaching their full potential."
From now on public bodies will have to take account of disability from policy formulation to the way services are delivered and publish a plan, called a disability equality scheme, showing how they intend to do it.
The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) says that it has been pressing for the introduction of the DED since 2000. DRC chairman Bert Massie said it would have "a major impact on the lives of disabled people".
Mr. Massie explained: "Public bodies - from the local library to the NHS - will have to consider what disabled people need when planning their services."
Discrimination
The DRC says that the duty marks a "step-change" from the previous system whereby people had to complain about discrimination after an incident had taken place. It says the DED was needed in order to tackle the "endemic discrimination" that disabled people encounter when accessing public services.
According to the DRC, people with disabilities are less likely to receive a full education, less likely to get a job, more likely to be discriminated against by the NHS and more likely to be victims of crime.
Minister for disabled people Anne McGuire agrees that the DED amounts to a step-change - both in terms of the way disabled people can access services and in their involvement in policy making.
"It's not going to be a tick-box exercise," she told the BBC News website, adding that the DED was needed "to redress the balance that - for too long - services were often tailored to meet the needs of the provider and not those who actually received the services".
The DRC is expected to scrutinise public bodies' plans to promote disability equality. The ultimate sanction against organisations that fail to meet their obligations would be legal action.
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