Disabled set alarm bells ringing

LAST WEEK vice chancellors and principals met to discuss the impact of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act on universities and colleges. Only the week before, Unison members joined a mass lobby of Parliament to demonstrate how weak the Act is compared with the Civil Liberties Bill being promoted by the main disabilities groups.

The difference between the hopes and expectations of disabled people and the state of play in universities could hardly be greater. Unhappily, the fact that December 3 was designated International Day of Disabled People's Human Rights passed virtually unnoticed on campuses. The aim of the university leaders' conference was to look at the impact of the 1995 Act on institutions as employers, landlords and as providers of services to the public. This included the letting of premises, conferences, lecture theatres and the duties and role of the funding councils.

While the conference itself is to be welcomed, it is in the context of 70 per cent of universities and colleges making no plans to implement the requirements of the Act. While universities generally had a better response rate than colleges, only 23 per cent had a code of practice or flexible working arrangements for disabled people.

Since December 2 it has become unlawful for an employer with 20 or more employees to treat disabled people less favourably where recruitment, dismissal, promotions and other benefits are concerned. Disabled people can now complain to an industrial tribunal if they experience discrimination at work and employers now have a duty to make "reasonable adjustments" to the workplace.

Unison and the TUC have been very critical of the weaknesses of the Act, not least the failure to create a disability commission with the same powers as the Equal Opportunities Commission or the Commission for Racial Equality. The issue of "reasonable adjustments" is also wide open to interpretation. However, the cost implications must be ringing alarm bells everywhere.

The reasonable adjustments include not only the obvious and expensive ones of adapting premises, but also acquiring or modifying equipment, transferring an employee who becomes disabled to another job, providing training or a reader or interpreter and modifying instructions or manuals.

Although disabled groups object to what they regard as the "medical model" contained in the Act rather than the "social model" they advocate, even its limited requirements present a huge challenge to universities in terms of cost and change of attitude. You have only to look around your own campus to see the enormous changes that would be required to make a university prosecution-proof let alone user-friendly.

In the next decade children with special needs who have been integrated into the mainstream school system will qualify for university in greater numbers. They will expect universities to provide a welcoming environment.

Pressure from Brussels will probably increase by next summer, particularly if there is a change of government in Britain. Universities have an exciting opportunity to help change the agenda with the assistance of disabled people. Let us hope that by the New Year all universities, rather than the current figure of 30 per cent, will have published their plans for implementing the Disability Act.

Rita Donaghy is permanent secretary of the Institute of Education student union, a member of the national executive council of Unison and of the TUC General Council and the executive committee of the European TUC.