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New provisions have been made to Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act
(DDA) which will lift the exemption to "the use of any means of transport".
This is expected to come into force in December 2006. The new provisions
will build on the existing law. The draft code contains examples
of behaviour that transport providers must ensure does not occur, and steps
that it is likely to be reasonable for them to have to take in order to
comply with the new duties. It is difficult to sum up the whole
code in a few paragraphs, but some examples are:
- a train operator may need to offer to serve at his seat a passenger
who cannot access the buffet on the train
- a car rental operator must not charge more for a car with hand
controls or pedal extensions. the cost of reasonable adjustments
is an expense of the business and needs to be spread across all
customers
- a train operator may need to allow a wheelchair user to sit in a
first class carriage without paying a supplement if the accessible
toilet in standard class is out of order
- a large breakdown recovery operator may need to arrange and pay for
an accessible taxi for a driver who is not able to climb into the cab of
a recovery vehicle; a smaller operator may only need to supply details
of accessible taxi operators in the area
- where a wheelchair user is in a scheduled express coach, the coach
operator may need to make an adjustment to its policy of not stopping
other than at designated stops if access to one of the stops is blocked
by a parked car so that the powered ramp cannot be used
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