Disability Discrimination Act 1995

Disability Act
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was the first domestic Act on the issue of disability discrimination, prior to which it was legal to discriminate and exclude on the basis of disability (politics.co.uk). The Act covers a wide range of areas where discrimination is an issue, from employment issues to use of transport. The National Disability Council was set up by the Act, they then went on to be abolished when the Disability Rights Commission was established in April of 2000. The Disability Rights Commission was then replaced with the Equality and Human Rights Commission in October of 2007.
Legal protection for disabled people was changed from the Disability Discrimination Act to the Equality Act. The Equality act was put

(Equality Act 2010) this means that a person can be labelled as having a disability if it takes much longer than it usually would, to complete a daily task like getting dressed (Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010) and/or they have struggled for more than 12 months.
The Equality Act protects people from discrimination in areas such as employment and education as well as access to goods, services and facility’s, and buying and/or renting land or property. The Act has also provided protection for people associated with a disabled person such as a parent or carer.
Progressive conditions such as HIV, cancer, multiple sclerosis and some visual impairments are also covered by the Act.
Given the high cost and complicated nature of disability litigation, upholding and enforcing legal rights that protect against discrimination under the DDA has risked controversy since the Act was first introduced. This led to many cases of discrimination going unnoticed or not to be acted

However not many people take into account mental disabilities such as Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Dyslexia both of which are classified as disabilities under the Equality Act 2010. This may be because people with a mental disability often don’t show physical symptoms of illness.
This has led society to come up with their own ways of telling if a person is disabled. Obvious signs of a disability often include the use of a wheelchair, some sort of walking aid or a cane/guide dog if a person is blind and/or hard of hearing. Some of the society has started to recognize other people with support/assistance dogs as being disabled as well however many people with a mental disability don’t have or can’t get access to a support dog. Other ways society has come up with for identifying disabilities are assumptions, despite often being inaccurate or simply very wrong, these assumptions have allowed us to tell whether someone has just a regular cold or of a more serious condition. These assumptions, however, cannot help us identify what the exact condition the person is suffering from but they can give us some indication of how bad it is. Mental illness once again confuses society due to the lack of physical symptoms rendering the assumptions