Equality Act 2010 does not protect disabled students enough

I’m sure that they do but then again I’m not well versed in the law field.

So how do you come to the conclusion that the law doesn't need changes?

Because I believe that it’s fine the current way that it is and I’ve already given reasons in my other comment.

No, but I don't agree as explained in my response to you and you haven't considered my viewpoint but dodged it by saying that you aren't a legal expert even though legal expertise is not a prerequisite for discussing inadequacy of a piece of law. I am sure you realise that not every MP is a lawyer either.

I’ve considered but like most people across the several threads I disagree with it.

But I have responded that hate crime legislations do not cover all kinds of discriminatory behaviour, including covert actions that seek to exclude, ruin the career or undermine the well-being of disabled people.

These all have much more insidious and long-lasting adverse impact on disabled people than one-off abusive behaviour. This is one of the reasons that this problem never ceases and may even be worse than racism, especially academia where all of such behaviour can be excused by masquerading it as "academic judgement".

You can’t speak for all disabled people in this case as this certainly doesn’t apply to me in this case (for the most part). I instead echo Cavy in that university has done a better job at supporting me for disability than any other establishment or person I’ve met.

The most ableism that I’ve faced in this country from someone in this country has not been from lecturers for me.

1. That is your personal experience and not representative of all disabled people either
2. You don't need the mandate of all disabled people to propose constitutional amendments to raise the deterrent effect of the existing laws
3. A disabled person can also be ableist towards other disabled people with different conditions from them

1. I’m aware that what I’ve said doesn’t apply to all disabled people but that doesn’t stop me or others in the thread from disagreeing with the points along with the fact that no concrete examples or evidence of these acts of discrimination has been provided.
2. You’re right that you don’t need the mandate of all disabled people but I’m still not going to be one of those people fighting for the equality act (when it comes to disabled people) to be updated. I believe that the act is fine in it’s current form (at least when it comes to disabled people). I’m grateful to be in a country where I feel like this and is one of the few reasons I don’t want to move out of the UK on speed dial (I have a lot of criticisms with this country which I won’t get into).
3. Irrelevant to the point and I’m aware that disabled people can be ableist, just like how women can be misogynistic, people from minority groups can be discriminatory in general etc

No, but I don't agree as explained in my response to you and you haven't considered my viewpoint but dodged it by saying that you aren't a legal expert even though legal expertise is not a prerequisite for discussing inadequacy of a piece of law. I am sure you realise that not every MP is a lawyer either.

regarding suggestions in the original post, the obudsmen does not have the legal authority to determine whether a public or private body acted within the law or not. even if it had powers to prosecution, all crimes would have to be reported to the police first who conduct an investigation of the complaint - and the police do not have the authority to investigate matters like this as they are not qualified solicitors. like there are reasons why that whole side of law has its own civil procedure rules and ways of uncovering evidence also known as 'discovery' that only solicitors can do because they do it between each other and possibly with court orders if necessary. police may investigate crime scenes, but they do not know **** about contracts or whether something was a reasonable adjustment.



if you're thinking **just tack on a criminal sentence at the end of the equality act and call it criminal** - that's not how it works. yep as you've stated, you do not need to be a legal expert - but there are extremely basic principles of criminal law one should be familiar with in order to have a reasonable discussion on said law rather than just a rant on unfairness. evidently you are unfamiliar with criminal law, which is fairs. no average sane person thinks about such things.

you can't criminalise the equality act 2010 for at least one simple reason - there's no mens rea. all crimes require mens rea unless there's strict liability, which is impossible here cuz not all discrimination is unlawful. some can be justified; like there's only so many reasonable adjustments one make before one cannot realistically fly a plane.

theoretically if we added the mens rea requirement, then how would the cps prove it? mens rea being what the defendant did was intentional/reckless due to a resentment towards the disabled student. note negligence is almost never seen in criminal law, not unless it's a case of manslaughter and a surgeon for obvs reasons, cuz then there's a dead body.

similar to hate crime, intention would obvs have to be expressed, hopefully in the form of emails or recorded messages. if it's in the form of verbal/written abuse, it can already be prosecuted under existing law if serious enough - protection from harassment act 1997. this would amount to essentially being threatened tho, which is why, i'm guessing, you haven't gone to the police and instead wish to lower the standard of criminal harrassment to hurt feelings found in civil law pursuant to the equality act 2010 and give all powers on earth to the obudsmen. that's not going to happen tho; there's human rights law involved in criminal law which you fail to consider under the human rights act 1998. that's why the bar must be raised when possibly incarcerating a person who has a human right to liberty, expression and a fair trial under the Act and under common law. plus it's human nature to cause hurt feelings and there are a lot of snowflakes out there, so criminalising causing hurt feelings alone would open up a whole can of worms. surely you've caused some yourself on occasion, unintentionally of course.

if there is sufficient harm in another form that goes beyond hurt feelings, say a failed degree due to lack of reasonable adjustments, then the issue is causation and the 'but for' test. jurors must ask themselves if it were not 'but for' the university's actions the student wouldn't have failed - and this is why you don't want this criminalised cuz how can a jury be virtually certain that the failure wasn't a product of the student's own doing? there's hardly a way of knowing this, especially when students perform poorly all the time even with reasonable adjustments.

bear in mind the standard of proof is substantially higher in criminal law: juries must be 99% certain the defendant is guilty before they declare them so cuz, to paraphrase William Blackstone, it's better for 10 guilty men to go free than 1 innocent man in prison. it's not like civil law where claimants can win by being only slightly more believable than not (51% over 49%). another good reason why discrimination is better suited in civil courts - a claimant is far more likely to win.

fyi i am not judging you for having legal fantasies; i have some of my own. this along with your other posts tho reads more like them 'let's bring back the death penalty' threads, a fantasy that could never happen - yet you're framing it like it could so it's a bit confusing.

Disability discrimination "is not a problem" in the UK despite ample examples of it happening again and again? Isn't this the biggest proof that the Equality Act of 2010 has failed to protected disabled people particularly students / academics with chronic illnesses?

Oxford University student 'forced out because of disabilities' after college 'denies her extra time and calls her histrionic'

Three quarters of disabled staff at Sheffield university experience discrimination

Disabled students ‘face appalling barriers’ at latest university to face discrimination claims

£20k payout for ex-Queen's student in discrimination case

Disabled students and staff face discrimination at leading university, as documents reveal bullying is ‘rife’

Court Finds Discrimination by University of Bristol Caused Tragic Death of Disabled Student

Judge refuses Bristol University appeal in Natasha Abrahart suicide case

Disabled Lanarkshire law student's 'years of hell' at Glasgow University

University of Birmingham disabled students say 'we are tired' and demand action on disability 'discrimination'

Glasgow University apologises and pays £3000 to disabled student

UK government failing to protect disabled people, warns equality watchdog report

And on that note .....

"All "academic judgements" must be made challengeable to stop toxic ableist professors' abuse of such generic concept to pass off illegal biases and ruin the lives of disabled students"

I have yet to see a specific example of what the OP actually means by discrimination from their multiple posts, e.g. “ordinary” students A, B and C were allowed to do X, but student D with (specific disability Y) was not.

Please provide an example specific enough for others to understand what you mean "discrimination" and "ableist professors' abuse".

I’ve never said that disability discrimination is not a problem in the UK, you’re twisting my words. I’m saying you haven’t provided concrete examples, evidence or analysis of the ableist acts mentioned in the OP of this thread combined with most people disagreeing with the OP.


x2

Genesiss with the facts and logic once again 🙌🏾

i hope it made sense. i tried to simplify as best as i could! lol

ps idk what OP meant exactly about 'institutional discrimination' earlier, but universities can be vicariously liable for criminal offences of employees who have the status and authority to represent the 'directing mind and will' of the company.

theoretically, then, a university could be vicariously liable for a hate crime commited in the course of employment by some of its employees, say a head of department, cuz their acts and states of mind are deemed to be those of the the employer. unlikely liable for the hate crime committed by the person who cleans the toilets tho; that dude might be on his own.

'hate crime' isn't a specific crime, for clarity - it can be any crime in the book. all 'hate crime' does is provide a harsher sentence for the one found guilty of crime in general and was perceived by the victim or another person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards their protected characteristic. same protected characteristics under the equality act minus the sex category; that one doesn't count.

also, universities can be vicariously liable under the equality act 2010 unless it took all reasonable steps to prevent the discrimination in question. can provide links upon request cuz i don't wanna go into another tl;dr. besides, in reality OP's issue is not the law itself - but the legal system which fails to provide access to legal representation for ordinary people. i feel that frustration. in practice, law is just a suggestion of behaviour and the legal system is reserved for those who can afford it. wonder if we'd even be having this conversation if that weren't the case.

I’ve had 3 kids that were eligible for DSA for various reason’s in the UK, and where courses and exams have been adapted for them. I’m not saying that there aren’t things can be improved for some students, but in comparison to what we have experienced in France, the UK is light years ahead. Whether it has been for severe ADHD, dyslexia or anxiety, everything we had experienced until coming to the UK was « the real world won’t make allowances for you, so get used to it now. And if you can’t adapt to the education system, then leave the system because it won’t change »
So whilst I can see that some individuals might act like grains of sand in the mechanism, the system isn’t in itself corrupt or bad, and on the whole provides help and assistance which students the world over would be pleased to have in their places of study.

Facts. In France you get the same amount of time added regardless of the length of the exam apparently (e.g 15 mins extra time, it doesn’t matter if the exam is 2 hours long or 30 mins long, you’re getting 15 extra minutes, take it or leave it), in the UK is percentage based so 25%, 50%, 100% extra time which is much better.

The main reason why I didn’t bother going to university in France or applying to French universities (despite the much cheaper) is because I didn’t know if I could trust them to keep those accommodations (25% extra time, reader etc). They probably wouldn’t haven’t kept them (at least not to the same standard) and probably would have said « va te démerder! (French way of saying “you’re on your own Jack/mate” I think) »

Let’s not get started on the university accommodation also (the quality and cleanliness is abysmal, I know that it can be way cheaper than the cost of UK accommodation but honestly it ain’t worth it for me).

I definitely think that there’s still issues with the ways disabled people (including at university) are treated in the UK but Toad is thankful to be here and not in France when it comes to this sort of thing.

Obviously this isn’t to put the concerns in the OP down but yeah.

You will in fact get more time in France for dyslexia. You get 33% of the exam time on top ( un tier temp). However as long as you are passing your exams even with the worst grades you will find it almost impossible to be allowed it. One of my kids was tested as being in the worst 10% of dyslexic children, but because they have an almost photographic memory and high IQ they were getting through It took a two year battle with all the education authorities to finally win through. The fact that she wasn’t finishing papiers but was getting everything that she completed right made no difference to them. A pass was a pass and that’s all you need in France for the bac and entrance to uni, so why adapt anything for her. As for anxiety or ADHD you won’t get anything.