Making a complaint can be lonely and crazy making. This complaints bingo details universal responses to disabled people asserting their rights. It really isn’t you…
Evidence gathering:
- https://www.reasonableaccess.org.uk/resources/evidence-gathering/
- Subject Access Request guidance
- Equality Act and Disability Discrimination Act Explained
- Office of the Independent Adjudicator: You can ask the OIA to review how your complaint was handled if you go through all stages of your university’s complaints procedure and are not satisfied with the outcome
- Stammering law – website looking at how the Equality Act applies to people who stammer, but also a generally good resource on disability discrimination and the Equality Act
- Disability Rights UK fact sheet – includes suggested list of potential adjustments for disabled students
- Understanding the Equality Act – for disabled students
Reasonable Adjustments under The Equality Act
- The university has a duty to make reasonable adjustments, so one individual member of teaching staff cannot act as a gatekeeper to allowing that adjustment, the duty lies with the university as a whole. It is unlawful for a university to refuse to make reasonable adjustments, therefore the argument becomes about how ‘reasonable’ an adjustment is.
Whether it is ‘reasonable’ for an education provider to make any particular adjustment will depend on a number of factors, including:- the effectiveness of making the adjustment and whether it is practical to do so
- the financial resources of the education provider
- the availability of grants, loans and other assistance to disabled students, such as Disabled Student Allowance, or charitable trusts
the extent to which aids and services will be provided to disabled students from other sources - health and safety requirements – this means if the adjustment increased the risks to the health and safety of another person
the relevant interests of other people – this means where the adjustment results in significant disadvantage for other people. - Failure to provide a reasonable adjustment is a form of disability discrimination and therefore an unlawful act under the Equality Act.