Disability Explained

You are classed as disabled if you have a physical or mental impairment which causes a long term adverse effect in carrying out normal day to day activities. Normal day to day activities are such things as being able to feed yourself, take care of your personal hygiene, being able to shop for yourself and walking.

Usually the period classed as long term is at least 12 months but there are no hard and fast rules regarding this. It is classed as a substantial adverse effect when your abilities are limited in more than just minor ways and your inability will go towards deciding if you are classed as disabled or not by law.

Disability : Day to day activities

The disability discrimination act covers eight different kinds of ability, if one or more of theses are affected by your disability then your ability to carry out everyday activities is said to be affected.

Disability & The Internet

A study has recently shown that despite new laws under the disability discrimination act many websites are still inadequate when it comes to providing suitable access for those with disabilities.

Since 2003 the disability rights commission began testing websites to make sure they were complying with guidelines set out by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility programme. Of 1,000 sites tested 81% of them failed to reach the minimum standard of accessibility.

How Testing Was Done?

Testing was done running commercial available software on each of the 1,000 sites, testing included for example images on websites, such images on web pages should have what is described as an “Alt-tag” included for the use of blind or visually impaired people and is a text alternative which is a description of the image on the page.

The “Alt-tag” is read using a screen reader. Of the sites tested 100 of them were also tested manually by a disabled user group with disabilities ranging from dexterity impairments, blindness, partial sight, dyslexia and hearing impairments.

A large number of the websites which did have the “Alt-tag” feature were found to be wrong in matching the actual description with the image, for example the picture could be a cat and the description was dog.

Along with problems such as this the people testing also found many other problems such as cluttered and complex web page designs, confusing and disorienting navigation systems, and failure to describe images at all along with poor contrast between the background pages and content which made reading hard.

The research concluded that on average 8 instances of the guidelines put in place were being violated per homepage, and also found on average a potential 108 instances on the typical homepage where a disabled person would have particular trouble because of there disability.

Only 2 web sites out of the 1,000 tested actually reached the second highest level AA and not one of the sites tested managed to reach the top level.

When these findings where brought to light the DRC warned that hundreds of businesses may not be complying with equal access law for the disabled and that it was inevitable that they would face legal action from their disabled customers at some stage.

The Legal Obligation

The disability discrimination act states that it is unlawful for a provider of services to discriminate against a disabled person in failing to comply with its provisions.

Filed under: Disability & The Internet

Disability & The Law Courts

There isn’t a more nerve wracking experience to endure in life than paying a visit to a court of law for whatever reason. For disabled people however, it is even more taxing, unless the court of law conforms to disability regulation and is fitted with adjustments to benefit disabled people.

If you are deaf or hard of hearing

If you are deaf or hard of hearing and have to attend court for any matter then you are entitled to certain rights, information and support regarding communication and facilities should be given to you by the court.

What Rights Do Disabled People Have?

Disability rights for disabled people have greatly increased over the last few years when the disability discrimination act came into force in 1995. The aim of the act when introduced was to put an end to discrimination that was being faced by disabled people.

Key points of the disability discrimination act include:

* The right to fair employment. Every firm which employs 15 or more people has to conform to this act and covers dismissal, working conditions and redundancy.

* The right to have access to services and facilities.

Social Security For Disabled People

Social security benefits for the disabled vary from country to country but most countries have some kind of benefits that disabled people may be entitled to.

It is worth checking with the relevant social security benefits office in your country to make sure you don’t miss out on any of benefits you may be entitled to receiving due to your disabilities.

There are generally three main disability benefits that disabled people may be entitled to, these will have slightly different names depending on the country you live in.