10 Reasons Why Businesses Should Take Their Responsibilities Under The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 Seriously
- Avoid possible prosecution under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Part III of the Act, which came into force in October 2004, requires service providers to remove, alter or provide a reasonable means of avoiding any physical barriers, which a disabled person might encounter in accessing and using their premises.
- There are estimated to be over 8.5 million disabled people in Britain. Excluding such a large proportion of the population from using your service makes bad business sense.
- A recent report calculated that those 8.5 million have a combined spending power of over £40 billion per annum. If your business is inaccessible, those people will spend their money elsewhere.
- A building which is inaccessible to people with certain disabilities might also be excluding the frail elderly and/or mothers with pushchairs limiting your customer base even further.
- If a group or family includes only one person with a disability, you are likely to lose the custom of the whole group if the disabled person cannot benefit from your service.
- Customers in general are more likely to favour those businesses which show they take their social responsibilities seriously.
- Training in disability awareness and disability etiquette makes staff more considerate to the needs of all their customers and able to offer an excellent service to all.
- A service which is accessible to all will be user-friendly and
easy for all your customers.
Businesses can gain good publicity by offering an accessible service and will feature in a wider number of directories and publications. - If you have removed physical barriers for your customers, you will more easily be able to accommodate a disabled member of staff and meet your employment obligations under Part II of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 should the need arise , or enable you or your staff to continue working after an accident.
- An access audit undertaken by a qualified surveyor experienced in access consultancy will determine what barriers exist for disabled people and provide recommendations for improvement that could be made for accessibility for all.
For information about engaging a Chartered Surveyor call the RICS contact centre on 0870 333 1600 or visit www.rics.org
