DDA/Equality Act Reasonable Adjustment Access Audit
The DDA Act of 1995 to 2005 required that compliance to the Disability Discrimination Act should be by ‘Reasonable Adjustment’ The Equality Act 2010 came into force on October 1st 2010 and carries forward the past requirements of the DDA. Access All Areas are experts in this field and fully work with the reasonable adjustment requirements. With the assistance of our highly skilled disability equality access auditors we feel we are unique in offering reasonable adjustment access audits that find an even balance between the required regulations and your needs. We believe in the vital addition of common sense ‘Reasonable Adjustment’. We do not believe in making costly unnecessary recommendations in our access statement for you to gain compliance to the Act. Access All Areas is receiving requests to re-audit many buildings undertaken by other companies that have simply not applied ‘Reasonable Adjustment’ Resulting in non practice and expensive changes that today’s businesses cannot sustain.
We believe our Client List is a statement of our high quality services.
The Code of Practice states that what is reasonable will vary according to:
- The type of service being provided.
- The nature of the service provider and its size and resources.
- How the person’s disability affects them in that context.
- Supplying the service by other reasonable means, such as home visiting etc.
Examples
One small church recently contacted us after receiving a past DDA access audit report statement with recommendations totaling £40-000. This included removing & replacing all the church pews with removable seating to make way for wheelchair users. We simply recommended removing one pew to make room for two wheelchairs after investigations showed that the church had a weekly congregation of TWELVE! (‘Reasonable Adjustment’ in action’) Another recommendation was a costly ramp to gain entry up the front steps into a public building. Upon investigation we discovered a level entrance at the rear of the building located off of a busy side street. Clear signage directing those unable to manage the steps giving directions to the rear of the building was recommended at minimum cost. (‘Reasonable Adjustment’ in action’)
A very important issue about ‘Reasonable Adjustment’ is timescales of work to be undertaken. We take into account your available finances and mostly suggest you undertake the improvements within your own regular building maintenance periods. Any areas of Health & Safety are judged on there severity. The important fact is that you have a disabled equality access audit report completed showing you have recognised the non compliance of your building/service and you are working on a scheduled implementation of access improvements designed to meet your individual finances.
- We were recently requested to take over the past DDA access audit of a 15 storey building in central London after part of the previous auditors recommendations included the immediate replacement of 85 doors that had high vision panels. We simple requested the correction of panels in the busiest areas to be undertaken at their next maintenance period, with the remainder over a five year period. 31 doors were excluded from correction due to being in non public and non working areas. (‘Reasonable Adjustment’ in action’)