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Careers at HM Treasury
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 introduced a new definition of disability. As a result, disability is not defined by whether someone has a particular condition, but about the effect of the condition on normal day to day activities.
The Act defines disability as follows:
This means that to be covered by the Act a person must have a condition which:
The Act covers people who have a disability or have had a disability in the past (even if they have fully recovered).
The main concepts used in the Act’s definition are:
This covers physical or mental impairments, and includes sensory impairments such as those that affect sight or hearing. Mental impairments include those that affect mental functioning, including learning disabilities. It includes clinically well-recognised mental illness – that is to say mental illness that is recognised by a respected body of medical opinion.
This means that the disability must have had an adverse effect that is more than minor or trivial.
This means an effect which;
Broadly speaking these are activities, which people do, fairly frequently or regularly. The Act says there must be an effect on the person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, not necessarily an effect on the activities themselves.
The Act’s definition also covers: disabilities being treated (examples include epilepsy corrected by medication or diabetes controlled by insulin), people who were disabled in the past but have recovered (e.g. past history of cancer or mental illness), severe disfigurements, progressive conditions and people who were formally registered as disabled.
