Scottish
Disability
Team
Disability Impact Assessments: A Brief Guide
A Scottish Disability Team Guidance Note, published December 2005
This article is available to read online or for download:
Legal Note
These Scottish Disability Team Guidance Notes are intended to provide general advice only, and are not an authoritative treatment of the law. Professional advice should be sought before acting on any of the material contained in these Guidance Notes as it may not be appropriate to your circumstances. These Guidance Notes are intended to relate primarily to the law as it applies to Scotland, however colleagues from other countries and elsewhere in the UK may find it useful to refer to the information contained herein.
Acknowledgements
The Scottish Disability Team would like to thank Marian Larson (marian@equalityplus.co.uk) who devised and wrote this document. We would also like to thank all colleagues for their most helpful comments on draft versions of the document.
A note on Language: In this document we use the language of "impairment" and "disability" as defined by the social model of disability. It is also the preferred language of the disabled peoples' movement. Whilst people have impairments, e.g. deafness, blindness, muscular dystrophy etc, disability is the outcome of the interaction between a person with an impairment and the environmental and attitudinal barriers s/he may face. The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 (DDA), however, uses the term "disability" to mean what the social model defines as "impairment", so it occurs in this way in these Guidance Notes when direct quotations from either the DDA or its associated Codes of Practice are used.
The term "involving disabled people" is used to keep the text more concise. This term covers disabled staff, disabled students, other disabled people and disability organisations.
Contents
- 1: Introduction (this page)
- 2: About Impact Assessments
- 3: Mapping policies and practices
- 4: Assessing Individual Policies and Practices
- 5: References and Further Resources
- 6: Impact Assessment Summary
1: Introduction
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 has been amended by the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 so that, from December 2006, all public authorities will have a duty to promote disability equality. This General Duty means that public authorities must have due regard to the need to:
- Eliminate unlawful discrimination;
- Eliminate unlawful harassment;
- Promote equality of opportunity;
- Take steps to take account of disabled persons' disabilities, even where that involves treating disabled persons more favourably;
- Promote positive attitudes towards disabled persons;
- Encourage participation by disabled persons in public life.
The Act also places specific duties on certain public authorities including Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Colleges. These are designed to help HEIs and Colleges to meet the General Duty and require them, amongst other requirements, to prepare and publish a Disability Equality Scheme.
Disability Equality Schemes are intended to be holistic and cover, not only student provision, but also issues for staff and members of the public. They will have the following key features:
- Disabled people must be fully involved in their design;
- They must be accompanied by Action Plans;
- They must be monitored;
- They must include details of arrangements for conducting Impact Assessments of policies and practices;
- Progress must be reported.
The purpose of this Guide is to provide brief, practical guidance on conducting Impact Assessments in advance of the implementation of the Act in December 2006. Impact assessments should normally be mainstreamed and conducted by the person responsible for the policy or practice, with guidance or training provided by disability specialists to ensure that this is done effectively. It is hoped, therefore, that the guidance will be of use both to Disability Coordinators/Advisers and to other staff in HEIs and Colleges with responsibility for strategy planning and service delivery.