Under the DDA, businesses have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ so they do not discriminate against disabled customers or employees.

A reasonable adjustment is a change you need to make to your business in order to meet your duties under the DDA. The law has been designed so that you only have to make reasonable changes, but if you fail to do what is reasonable, a disabled person could take legal against you for treating them unfairly.

You should consider the following when deciding what sort of change is likely to be reasonable for your company:

• Type of business
• Size of business and annual turnover
• Cost of the adjustment
• Disruption to the business while the work is being carried out
• Practicality of carrying out the adjustment
• Potential benefits to disabled customers and employees

The DDA requirement with regards to changes to premises currently states:

“Where a physical feature….makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled persons to make use of…a service, it is the duty of the provider of that service to take such steps as it is reasonable, in all the circumstances of the case, for him to have to take in order to:

• Remove the feature
• Alter it so that it no longer has that effect
• Provide a reasonable menas of avoiding the feature
• Provide a reasonable alternative method of making the service in question available to disabled persons.” 

Here are some of the topics you may want to contact Inclusion about, in order to discuss in relation to your business and reasonable adjustments……

• Accessing your information
• Entering and moving around your premises
• Customer service
• Employing disabled people

Inclusion provide free DDA advice and support as well as a full range of DDA access services all aimed at helping you meet your duties under the DDA with the minimum cost and effort, providing expert, independent advice that you can rely on…….sounds reasonable………