The Disability Discrimination Act, 1995, sets out the rights of deafblind and other disabled people when they are using services - such as shops, banks and restaurants - and it makes discrimination illegal.
Before this Act came in, some shops would refuse to offer a service to disabled people. Now, of course, this is against the law. Also, it is illegal to offer people a lower standard of service simply because they are disabled, or to charge them more for a service to cover the cost of helping them to use it.
The law says that people who provide services must make reasonable adjustments to enable deafblind and other disabled people to use them.
What is a "reasonable adjustment"?
What is "reasonable" depends upon the size, resources and nature of your service, and ultimately, only a court can decide what is reasonable in a particular situation. Here is an example:
It would be reasonable for a service of any size or nature to allow a deafblind customer to use written notes to communicate with them. It would also be reasonable for any service to allow assistance dogs onto their premises. However, while it would be reasonable for a large high street bank to provide their information packs in Braille, it might not be reasonable to expect a small shop with limited resources to do this.
The Handy Hints and Communicating and Guiding sections of this website will help you to identify reasonable adjustments you can make in order to make your service accessible to deafblind people.
