It replaces the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and subsequent amendments (except for UK related parts of the DDA for civil servants working in Northern Ireland).
By guiding companies to be more inclusive today and strengthening the legal rights of individuals, a more inclusive society can grow year on year.
When considering your current and future policies, procedures and practices, seeking merely to comply is a high risk approach. Disability legislation requires organisations to be proactive and committed to making information available. For customers with a vision impairment it means having robust policies in the provision of accessible formats and having these policies communicated freely within an organisation. The Equality Act encourages organisations to make the provision of accessible formats readily accessible and not an inconvenient barrier to accessing goods and services.
Building on the Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000 and the Financial Services Authority (FSA), Treating Customers Fairly the FCA has its own guidelines on how to treat customers. Under “Fair Treatment of Customers”, outcome three aims to ensure, “consumers are provided with clear information and are kept appropriately informed before, during and after the point of sale.”
Clear information is crucial to ensuring consumers are treated fairly, in particular where consumers do not take advice and must rely on the clarity of information when making decisions. The guidelines state, “a firm must pay due regard to the information needs of its clients and communicate information to them in a way that is clear, fair and not misleading.”
Further clarification of this outcome has included the provision of accessible formats being necessary to make information clear and accessible to consumers who have a vision impairment.