Reasonable Access
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Asserting yourself during discrimination
Complaining about disability discrimination
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British and NI law explained
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Legal claims (England/Wales)
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Author: Natalya Dell
Beware the nice!
Beware of people being nice…
This is a common issue in situations where a disabled person is asking for reasonable adjustments and the organisation is being very nice, but taking their time to respond with a decision about whether they will make the requested adjustments (or offer any suitable alternatives).
Delays + niceness are danger signs. Signs that the organisation is stalling and relying on the disabled person feeling compelled by politeness to wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
The niceness is often just another stalling tactic.
The niceness is often covert, and possibly even not intended by the individuals involved to be malicious, but still has the same effect, of denying and delaying access to adjustments and access to disabled people.
Nice people are very hard to challenge, because challenging is "not nice".
Challenging is "not polite".
My advice for dealing with niceness is to reply and keep your tone "super-nice" while setting explicit targets for response times. Doing this may help junior staff in the organisation escalate things to someone with authority to get things sorted out.
Some example wording might be:
Dear PERSON-NAME,
I made my request for X reasonable adjustment over X weeks ago and still do not have an agreement from ORGANISATION that X or another suitable adjustment will be made for me.
I really do need X to be provided. Part of the Equality Act reasonable adjustments duty is that an adjustment is provided within a reasonable timeframe. Delays to provision of an adjustment can be deemed 'unreasonable'.
Therefore I need ORGANISATION to respond to me by DATE [I suggest allowing no more than 2 weeks] with a decision about X. If X is refused, I need ORGANISATION to tell me why X is not reasonable and suggest suitable alternative adjustments that would still meet my needs.
If I do not receive a satisfactory response from ORGANISATION by DATE, I will have no choice but to make a formal complaint to ORGANISATION.
You may also find the information on our Complaints Page is also helpful in dealing with stalling niceness.
Support Doug in remote court on 19th April (Edited)
We would welcome people who are available on the afternoon of Monday 19th April 2021 (between 2pm and 5pm-ish) who can attend a remote video court hearing to support Doug Paulley. (The hearing was adjourned from last week)
Doug is a wheelchair user who as a Litigant in Person (self-represented) is taking a rare private criminal prosecution against a public transport operator for running an inaccessible coach in June 2020.
Doug is relying on Section 175 of the Equality Act 2010 which covers breaches of the Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations 2000 (PSVAR).
If you are interested, please contact Doug so he can send you joining instructions on the morning of 19th April (as the official court system doesn't always work reliably).
Important change to the Civil Procedure Rules for disabled people
We are delighted to see that there has been a significant change to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) that will increase the rights of disabled and other court users from the 6th April 2021.
In practice we hope this means disabled people engaging with the courts should be able to draw attention to their "vulnerable status" under "Practice Direction (PD) 1A [PDF: p9-10]" and use this to strengthen requests for reasonable adjustments and good quality access to proceedings.
A downside of this positive change is that it is framed as "vulnerability". A term that we see increasingly used about disabled people in ways that perpetuates pity and patronisation rather than rights and equity. Having impairments in and of itself should not denote vulnerability. Vulnerability for people with impairments like disablement is often caused by society, where disabled people's access needs are not met and reasonable adjustments are not made.
Access-refusals cause anxiety – psycho-emotional disablism
Inspiration for today's blogpost
"Accessibility alleviates anxiety"
A quote shared by disability activist Liam O'Dell on Twitter today. People quickly commented and quote tweeted with their own experiences of anxiety arising from access refusals. Especially those experiences which happen over and over and over again.
I know that repeated and seemingly endless experience of having access refused and being made bad and as if that is our fault, is very familiar to many disabled people. It's certainly something I experience a lot and have spent a lot of time, thought and practice trying to deal with in my life, paid work and activism.
What is psycho-emotional disablism?
While doing a postgraduate diploma in Disability Studies in 2015, I came across a concept called "Psycho-emotional disablism". This was originally developed by Carol Thomas and expanded upon considerably by Donna Reeve. Here is an introductory paper about psycho-emotional disablism and mental distress for example.
What struck me about Reeve's writing beyond it being very accessible and relate-able to mine and other disabled people's real lives, was Reeve identifying disability legislation such as the Equality Act itself as a source of psycho-emotional disablism. The way things work in the UK (and similarly in the USA and many other places). Disabled people still have to ASK for access (repeatedly), and consequently, still have to risk refusal and the anxiety that results from that (often repeated) mental distress. Reeve talks about the role of internalised-disablism in how we perceive externalised disablism (access refusals and discrimination). She also points out how the Equality Act may also cause and perpetuate "indirect psycho-emotional disablism" in itself with examples given in the above paper of separate back entrances for level access users.
Dr Amy Kavanagh uses the term trauma to describe the impact of repeated access refusals while quote-tweeting Liam: "The trauma comes from the repeated feeling of asking for support and being told you don't deserve it. It eats away at your confidence and self-worth.".
Psycho-emotional disablism's influence on the founding of Reasonable Access
Before Reasonable Access was founded by Doug, Esther and myself, we had had many long conversations about the psychological impact (mental distress) of dealing with access refusals. Additionally, the legal system often adds more distress as the people within it do not understand the experience of being denied access.
Recognising the existence of psycho-emotional disablism in our own and other disabled people's lives and activism was a significant influence in Doug, Esther and I co-founding Reasonable Access. We wanted to find ways we could bring people together to support one another with the experience of access refusals and where appropriate, help people learn how to challenge them effectively or strategically. One practical tool we have for that is the Reasonable Access website with information and resources including our Disability Access Bingo tool.
Another plank of our aims is to help people look after themselves while experiencing discrimination, challenging discrimination – or in some cases, making a reasoned decision not to challenge, but to get away from the source of mental distress as a greater priority. We (Esther) recently covered some of those issues in a recent blog post about when not to keep fighting a case. We also know from experience that discrimination is so widespread, that none of us can challenge even a small percentage of what we face, and have to make (sometimes) hard choices about what we do and do not do.
Implications of minimisation of mental distress in the legal system
Within the legal system itself, minimising of the mental distress of discrimination is also widespread and problematic. We know at least one person who has had a judge say something along the lines of "you must just get used to discrimination so it isn't as detrimental to you when any incident happens"!!!
We asked our disabled friends and contacts whether frequency of discriminatory experiences made things easier or harder. Overwhelmingly disabled people said they did not find it easier and that repeated discrimination became harder to deal with, and more physically and mentally distressing over time.
If largely non-disabled judges are able to assume that repeated discrimination is less harmful to us, then our legal cases will have less legal clout because the amount of compensation is related to the level of detriment the judge believes a claimant has experienced. At worst, it could be deemed that whatever the disabled claimant experienced, did not meet the disability discrimination legal test of being "more than minor or trivial", and therefore wreck the case entirely.
Make the distress of access refusals known to ourselves and others
We need to find ways to make it clear to non-disabled people that access refusals and discrimination are distressing and harmful and that repeated discrimination does not make it easier.
We hope people reading this will find the idea of psycho-emotional disablism helpful in your own lives and where appropriate, activism and challenging discrimination. Sometimes putting up with discrimination is no longer viable, and that overcoming our reluctance and initiating a formal complaint gets the attention of important enough people that positive change can start to happen.
We hope you'll find Reasonable Access's website resources helpful and we can all build communities of support around us to help manage discrimination and sometimes-activism.
Posted on August 5, 2020 August 5, 2020
Coronavirus should not remove Equality Act obligations
Widespread claims that the Equality Act no longer has full force
We are noticing several disabled people and disabled people's groups are saying that other organisations are claiming that they don't have to meet disability Equality Act duties such as properly considering disabled people's needs, or making adjustments, because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
This is likely to be nonsense!
The Equality Act is still in full force, there have been no legal "easements" to it.
We are not lawyers, this is definitely not legal advice, but some thoughts we have and strategies to try.
Small changes may be legitimate
There may be small changes, such as "what is reasonable", or what is a "proportionate means to a legitimate aim" which are genuinely reasonable right now.
Reasonableness changes
With 'reasonableness' changes, we would argue that the organisation has a duty to consider other ways of achieving the maximum level of access possible for a disabled person. They need to be thinking about alternatives to what is "less reasonable" at this time.
What is proportionate
A legitimate aim to reduce risk of Coronavirus to staff or customers, or a change in resources, but organisations still have to consider whether what they are doing is proportionate. Are organisations properly considering risk?
Some positive examples we have seen
The wearing of disposable arm protectors to enable staff to provide hands-on guiding to visually impaired people.
Providing verbal guiding while still distancing.
PPE being provided to staff who need to get within 2 metres of a customer to assist them.
Allowing disabled people to avoid queueing.
Ensuring that one-way systems don't disadvantage disabled people.
Things you might do
The most important strategy we have noticed is to start a dialogue with the organisation.
Don't take "no" for an answer, it's often not well informed.
Remain polite at all times, but project confidence in your rights.
Push back. Don't take the first (or several) "no" for an answer.
You don't have to quote the exact bits of the Equality Act, just mention you feel that it is not being correctly understood and followed.
Try a polite challenge. Ask the organisation to reconsider its decision
Ask the organisation what consideration they have made to meeting disabled people's needs.
Ask for evidence to justify why access is being refused.
Request copies or links to policies they're relying on. If the policy is long, ask them to say which part they rely on.
Ask them to provide evidence of considering disabled people's needs in their planning.
Ask for proof that providing access is justified e.g. what risks they consider exist.
Ask what alternative options have been considered.
Try a formal request
If you have tried some pushback strategies and are still not getting anywhere. Make a formal request for access.
Summarise what you have asked and been told and what access you feel you are entitled to.
You can mention parts of the Equality Act, although you may need to find the right part to quote.
A useful one is often the reasonable adjustments duty. Where it is lawful to ask for different or even 'favourable' treatment if the alternative is no access.
Next options
If you get no reply, or an unsuitable reply, look at our complaints page for ideas.
We can't guarantee these strategies will get access 100% of the time, but in our experience they are effective a lot of the time. The more regular disabled people who push back, the less organisations are likely to get away with disablist policies and practices.
Maybe some organisations will realise that pushback costs them more time and effort than just being accessible and inclusive from the start!
That's one of our hopes and aims anyway.
Giving up a complaint or legal case
When to give up
When trying to use the law for social change, knowing when to move on is a key skill. We must all cultivate the ability to decide that continuing isn't the right choice, in this particular circumstance.
Deciding when to give up on righting a wrong is hard. Sometimes, this can mean that a very large part of your capacity is taking up trying to achieve something which may not be achievable. Often, giving up becomes harder the longer you have pursued the issue, the more intensively you've pursued it and the more grievous the wrong was.
Justice done – or not
Giving up doesn't mean 'justice has been done' or that you weren't wronged. It means you have accepted that, within our current deeply unjust world, it's not a good use of your own limited capacity to pursue this specific injustice. The systems may be set against you, or you just don't have the support you need, or it is negatively affecting your mental/physical health, or all of these. Of course, it's also possible that you're wrong, but this is unlikely. Stopping pursuing something doesn't mean you're accepting it was okay.
(Along the same lines: winning/going through the whole of a process, particularly a legal one, doesn't mean that 'justice has been done' necessarily, particularly when the systems issues that created it remain.)
Why we're writing about 'giving up'
Here at Reasonable Access, we like to see stopping focus on something as a good thing: it frees up your focus for different things.
Some examples of situations where no longer pursuing a complaint or case might include if:
You don't think much about other things.
The case has become a very big part of your life.
It feels like the case is a problem which you, and you alone, are concerned about – maybe your focus on it is much much bigger than other peoples engagement.
Dealing with the case is negatively affecting your physical or mental health.
You have tried many avenues to addressing the problem, and none of them have helped.
People close to you find it difficult when you talk about it or you find yourself talking about little else.
Dealing with the other side in the complaint becomes damaging, toxic and too physically or emotionally demanding
Financial risks increase with no good way to mitigate them.
Sometimes it isn't the case or the problem but your own life circumstances which change the sensibleness of continuing:
You have less time maybe due to a new job or change in family circumstance
Other campaigns or issues need to take priority
Challenges such as a pandemic, bereavement, job-loss
Your personal capacity changes, maybe due to change in impairment impact or detriment to your mental health
Who is to blame for discrimination
It is great when we pursue issues, get a good result and achieve social change. However if we don't, that isn't a reflection on us. It is a reflection of the unjust world and systems. We don't choose to be discriminated against in the first place, and it is unfair that once we have been, we have to decide if or how to fight for change as a result. Choosing not to fight can have a significant impact, as well as choosing to fight – because we can feel like we are letting ourselves or other people down.
We think, however, that we shouldn't feel like that. There should be no self-judgment as a result of deciding to not pursue an issue; or if pursuing it just doesn't happen because other things have got in the way. We didn't choose to be discriminated against; it is the world's problem that we are; it isn't our personal duty to challenge it. On the occasions we are able to pursue the issue, then that's a benefit rather than an expectation; and we need to release ourselves from guilt over issues we've not challenged. (Easier said than done, but important for our wellbeing!)
Knowing when to stop pursuing social change is an important part of social change!
COVID-19 Test and Trace – Open Letter and what you can do next!
Open letter sent to the NHS
This afternoon Reasonable Access sent an open letter to NHS England about the COVID-19 Test and Trace system asking questions about accessibility of various parts of the process to disabled people.
The full letter can be found as:
PDF Test and Trace Open Letter.
Text version of Test and Trace Open Letter
We would like to thank the over 120 signatories and countless others who have worked with us on this issue over the last week!
Our letter has also been written about in the Disability News Service. John Pring has done a lovely job of framing the relevant issues.
What next? Write to your MP
We need to keep up momentum. Keep pressure on the government and NHS to make accessibility for disabled people a priority!
We would like you to write to your Members of Parliament (MPs) to tell them about the issues you or others face, our open letter and ask them to contact the Secretary for Health and Social Care to put pressure on him to make disability access a priority.
You can find who your MP is and what their contact details using the Parliament MP finder.
We haven't provided a template because personalised contact is much more effective. You can search online for guides on writing to your MP, or the charity Gingerbread have an HTML guide you can get ideas from.
Alternative materials have been published – very quietly
Just before we sent the letter someone told us about the Test and Trace Alternative Formats Information page which answers some of our concerns, but no where near all of them. We still have questions including:
Why was this information not launched at the same time as the 27th May 2020 Test and Trace "How It Works" page?
If there had to be a delay in launch, why was there no indication that this information was coming?
Should disabled people have to wait over two weeks for information compared to non-disabled people?
Why has it not been widely promoted by @DHSCgovuk or @NHSuk Twitter accounts?
We also have concerns that the alternative information is very generic and will not apply to the specific COVID-19 test kits used and different testing centres which are all provided by different organisations.
Feel free to mention this and ask your MP to ask Matt Hancock about these issues as well.
Reasonable Access visits the Staying Inn
We've all been a bit splatted by recent Coronavirus issues, but have received some re-invigoration by being invited to this evening's Staying Inn virtual pub night to do a session on Disability Rights Advocacy. This session was recorded and is available at the Staying Inn webpages.
In the meantime Natalya made a 22 part Twitter thread which forms the basis of this blogpost (tidied up, reordered etc below). This post was written by Natalya (any spelling, grammar and other bloopers are my fault!).
Intro to Reasonable Access
Reasonable Access have a Twitter Account @Reas_Access. Natalya tweeted from her account as she was speaking for herself rather Reasonable Access as an organisation.
We hope you will find our website as accessible as a largely text-mode thing can be. If you have issues, let us know and we'll fix what we can. We're also hoping to increase our other formats of material soon.
Doug created a wonderful toolkit called DART in various text (.doc, PDF, HTML) and audio formats covering the various steps needed to take legal action in England and Wales.
We were asked about template letters for writing complaints. Some of the organisations on our own links page do templates – we recommend searching on the page for templates. We also hope to try and publish some useful content for putting in template letters soon.
Starting to advocate for yourself
While a lot of this session did focus on legal stuff, I deliberately focused on stages before legal action as "pre-legal advocacy" is one of my areas of strength. I don't much like the legalling as it's boring and stressful, and we'd all rather get effective access before that point.
Someone asked questions about how to start conversations around getting access. I answered this by saying I tended to create scripts for myself of common issues and dealing with common annoying responses. I try to analyse situations (while being kind to myself about having done my best) so I can keep improving with practice. I do have something in draft about dealing with situations and early complaints which I've moved up the TODO list to finish and publish here.
Evidence of discrimination
We were asked about using a video camera to record discrimination happening. We generally approve of this and recommend our evidence gathering webpage to get an idea of the issues, pros and cons.
While good evidence is invaluable in pre-legal complaints and legal complaints, there can be risks to people in gathering evidence. People can react very negatively or aggressively to being recorded and it requires careful situational judgement to ensure you are not put at risk by collecting evidence. Some people experience greater risks than others as characteristics like race, gender and apparent social class can affect how we are each perceived and treated. What is safe for me as a short white middle aged, middle class woman may not be safe for a Black person, or young white man for example! I managed to get this point into the session right at the end.
Starting out with litigation
Some people asked how they could start to take legal action for themselves.
I said that a good starting point was to get a clear idea of what you want to achieve and find out whether that is reasonably likely to happen with options that you can access. Linking up with others who have done it before and finding/creating spaces where people can support one another is a good way. We also recommend the contents of our links and regulations and guidance pages.
We also hope to release a Google Form in the next few days to get details of people who might be interested in engaging with others around advocacy and peer-support in different ways and help Reasonable Access share our knowledge effectively.
How to choose what cases to take or not
We were asked how we decide which cases to take or not. I think it is fair say we each do it differently and that there are no right or wrong answers here.
Esther answered the question saying she considers wider strategic impact and the time and effort it would take. Especially having learned from her past legal experiences how much time, energy and commitment it can take. Esther only sends Letters Before Action (final letter before filing with court) if she is definitely willing to pursue that case to court – specially with large organisations which will receive lots of letters before action so won't be scared by them.
I feel I'm not that strategic, impact on me and how infuriated I am play a part. I do sometimes send Letters Before Action when I won't have the spoons to act, because I know the letter can kickstart sense in some cases, or I plan to go to court, but then run out of cope later down the line – which I have taken to an Ombudsman to see if they are any use at all. A lot also depends on how 'nasty' the respondent is likely to be, as some organisations are known to be more challenging to litigate than others.
Another friend of mine who can't do litigation has taken one of their cases to an ombudsman to try and make an impact on the organisation by making them engage with that process and while they have very low expectations of a good outcome – it is better than nothing and wasn't very much work for them.
Accessibility of litigation and advocacy
A wise activist once said to me – "only do the activism you enjoy". I am not very good at always following this advice, but if you can find a shape of activism that works to your strengths, it is easier and less exhausting to do it than something which is not you-shaped.
Esther discussed her particular strengths and that she has the education and skills to do detailed letters; read, understand and cite long policy documents and got lots of practice for herself and her friends, and is able to do legal paperwork in short bursts or in the middle of the night if needs be.
Formal litigation does require the ability and capacity to do a lot of reading and writing, learning facts and following some very rigid court systems including deadlines. If a court says something has to be done by a certain date, it has to be done by that date or your entire case can be lost.
Questions were asked about communicating as a deaf person – which I answered by saying it isn't always easy, but I have the privilege of clear speech and spends a lot of time and energy fighting for access to real-time professional captioning, email access and refusing to use the telephone.
Other questions were asked about managing the legal system as a sight impaired person. We know visually impaired litigants and we don't think there are any good answers as the reading and writing remains difficult and it can often be difficult or impossible to get the courts or respondents to provide information in accessible formats.
Courts and the legal system are so poorly accessible that before we invited people to support Esther with her QOCS high court case we rushed out two webpages about accessing courts and tribunals and dealing with adjustments in courts and tribunals.
Some of us like Doug have even had to take legal action against the courts themselves for disability discrimination… And we may need to take more cases!
Emotional impact of advocacy and litigation
Several people asked about how we deal with the emotional impact of people saying horrible things about us when we challenge or litigate on disability rights. We don't have a magic answer, this is an issue we have all faced and continue to face.
Some things which can help are reading my Complaining Cripples Bingo which names some of the ways people and organisations can treat us when we ask for access. I find the Bingo format is great for showing that nastiness is so common that it is predictable and part of a wider structure and not personal to us as individuals. We hope to publish a Bingo version 2 which is a bit tidier and links to suggestions for things people can do to mitigate the horridness.
I also found the academic concept of psycho-emotional disablism to be very helpful. Especially work by a woman called Donna Reeve such as this PDF document. The recognition that every time we are refused access, that 'hurts us inside' and that is not our fault, that is the fault of the entity and structures that refuse access.
Other things which really help with the difficult emotional stuff is having friends and supporters, people who have experienced the same, who can remind us that it's not personal. This is where peer-support communities can be invaluable.
For some of us, and some of the time, the emotional impact of advocacy and litigation may always be too harmful and difficult to us. That has to be OK and all activism and campaigning needs more than one approach. If you can't do advocacy for yourself, you may be able to do other activism, support other people by doing things like sharing social media posts of other people, sign petitions, donate to Crowd Justice campaigns.
Esther added ideas like proofreading friends' advocacy stuff, support friends before, during or after court hearings, check in with friends, tell people you support them, send them cake (or other good things of choice) offer things you do have skills at — all of which can be helpful or necessary to the litigation but aren't the actual litigation itself.
Non litigation options – ombudsmen/regulators
Another non-legal option is to use regulators and ombudsmen services. We're sometimes sceptical because they are notoriously slow and sometimes less effective than we'd like, but Ombudsmen do have some positives. Using ombudsman and regulator services are free and there are zero legal risks to you personally. Some ombudsmen services may even agree to make access adjustments for you (although you may have to be a bit forceful to get them to do this) and they are not as adversarial as the legal system.
Some like the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) can have binding powers to recommend actual change as well as small amounts of compensation. But they won't usually be able to say that there has been an incident of disability discrimination because usually only a court can do that! And at least one person in chat reported an experience of this ombudsman taking 2 years to achieve nothing on their issue…
We have a webpage in proofing about ombudsmen and regulator services in proofreading stage.
Disability charities and organisations
One of the questions which we didn't get time to cover was around disability charities and how they can campaign on an issue but then not be supportive of individuals or groups actually trying to enforce the law on those issues. I think it is fair to say Esther, Doug and I all have concerns about large charities and 'the charity model' in general.
In short, large charities for disabled people often have different priorities than smaller charities which are "Deaf and Disabled Persons Led (DDPO)" which are "of" disabled people. When your funding and lobbying power with government and similar becomes dependent upon your establishment status then as an organisation you won't want to 'rock the boat' and almost unavoidably prioritise your charity's financial and other survival over the needs of your beneficiaries… While the government is supposed to engage with DDPOs, in practice they often only actually engage with non-DDPO disabled charities.
We don't have answers to that, we are aware that by setting Reasonable Access up as a charitable organisation ourselves we have accepted some of those conflicts as a price for some of the benefits of charitable status. We try to be honest about those limits and hope to stay as radical as we can! I think as individuals we are also careful about which larger charities we support, how we engage with them and how we challenge them to be better!
The dreaded Coronavirus and advocacy/litigation
While there is a general rule of not mentioning Coronavirus (Covid19) at The Staying Inn events, there were legitimate mentions of this in terms of advocacy and litigation right now.
Many of us are not leaving the house so we don't get the chance to experience barriers in the built environment such as steps into premises…. Some of us may have dropped legal challenges because of Coronavirus, either because we feel organisations have more important things to deal with, or because a small business may not survive; some of us (and others) have had to advocate and litigate more than ever to secure or improve rights. I personally have had some issues around phone-only access which became quite critical and I wasn't accepting Coronavirus as an excuse for when the issue was prevalent before hand. Now more than ever deaf people are struggling with phone and communication barriers – especially as masks become more mainstream.
Coronavirus Litigation
There are also a lot new barriers appearing as a result of how the Coronavirus pandemic is being handled, often at high level policy relating to restrictions, healthcare, reductions of existing rights and more. I tweeted very briefly range of excellent legal action that has had to be taken because of Covid19 related failings including (in no particular order):
Leigh Day and others challenging very worrying 'Do Not Rescusitate' orders and decisions being applied to disabled and older people during the pandemic.
Two separate cases challenging the NHS's overly restrictive policies around access for carer/PAs or communication support.
Dan Williams and Fry Law and Rachael Andrews and Leigh Day suing the government over their poorly accessible information during the outbreak.
Over 150 Deaf BSL users, Fry Law and Cloisters taking an EHRC supported potential Judicial Review claim against the government about their lack of provision of British Sign Language/English (BSL/English) interpreters at Westminster briefings. This is also promoted using the WheresTheInterpreter hashtag on Twitter and soon to have a campaign website.
11 organisations and Leigh Day challenging the Care Quality Commission (CQC) over their decision to suspend inspections during the pandemic.
Bindmans and claimant and Rook Irwin Sweeney and 3 claimants (PDF) challenging the government's lack of decision making policy if healthcare demand exceeds demand during the pandemic.
Bindmans and families of two autistic children challenged Coronavirus guidance which didn't recognise the needs of some disabled people to exercise more than once a day or travel to exercise by car.
Fry Law and over 300 disabled claimants challenging the policies around access to supermarket deliveries despite being at greater risk or having existing deliveries access stopped.
I have definitely missed cases, so consider this a sample of the firms and individuals achieving both large and small changes by the use of strategic and effective litigation!
Certainly from my own experience, having done two cases with legal representation gave me better ideas and skills to consider taking (simpler) cases for myself and informed how I handled the pre-legal stages better.
Survey – tracking issues affecting disabled people during the Coronavirus outbreak
Disabled people and our organisations are already noticing additional disadvantages during the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak.
We have created a survey to find out what issues disabled people are facing, what barriers exist to making feedback/complaints and tracking the outcomes. We hope to use this data to identify problems and identify successful strategies that you can use.
The Equality Act 2010 is still in force and it is likely to be unlawful to overlook disabled people's needs at this time. The more constructive feedback and complaints organisations get, the more likely it is that issues can be resolved.
Professional legal advice is hard to come by at the best of times, and right now legal practitioners are overwhelmed with demand. We will have to do most of this challenge work ourselves using a range of strategies including monitoring and tracking issues, using social media and raising awareness to ensure our needs are not forgotten.
19th Feb QOCS judgment
Anyone who wishes to support Esther Leighton at her QOCS (costs protection) hearing tomorrow where the judgment will be delivered needs to be at court 63 at the Royal Courts of Justice before 10am.
We recommend folk turn up by 9:30am at the Bellyard entrance.
For more information and context see our previous blogpost and links.
We will share the judgment and any other info as soon as we can.
Reasonable Access is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) in England and Wales.
Reasonable Access cannot provide legal advice and nothing on this website should be interpreted as such.