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Dateline: 3rd October, 2004 Disability Discrimination Act Now in Effect On 1st October all the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act came into effect. Under the Act, businesses and organisations are required to make reasonable physical adjustments to their premises to make them accessible to people with a disability. The law requires that they consider if there is a physical feature of their service, or in the way they deliver it, that makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for a disabled person to use it. The key word is "reasonable" and it is expected that there could be a flurry of court cases to establish just what constitutes "reasonable adjustments" or "unreasonably difficult". Actor and Thalidomide campaigner Mat Fraser told the BBC that he expected many older London theatres to be amongst the first to be sued and added that regional venues are generally better at providing for the disabled than those in the capital. About 10 million people (almost 17% of the population of the UK) has a disability. The DDA was passed in 1995 but its implemetation was staged to allow businesses and organisations time to make the necessary adjustments. In the December of 1996 discrimination against someone on the grounds of their disabilty became unlawful; in October 1999 businesses and organisations had to make reconable adjustments to their way of working so that people with disabilities could access their services; now, five years later, businesses and organisations are expected to have made "reasonable" physical alterations to their premises to ensure that no one with a disability is unable to access them. Full details can be found on the government's Diasbility website at http://www.disability.gov.uk/dda/ Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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