Many people who live and work in Eastbourne may meet people with disabilities during their everyday lives. In addition, Eastbourne has a large proportion of its workforce working in tourism and service industries where meeting the public is a vital part of the job.
3VA (formerly The Eastbourne Association of Voluntary Services) and the Forum for Physical and Sensory Disability produced a leaflet to help people who meet and work with the public to better understand the needs of people with disabilities. This leaflet is available to download at the end of this page, in PDF format.
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PDF and Accessibility
Visually impaired users may have trouble reading PDF files with screen reader software. To overcome this you can go to the Access Adobe website and use their online conversion tools for Adobe PDF Documents.
From June 2009, our speech-enablig tool, BrowseAloud will be able to read PDFs on our website.
Disability Awareness and Access to Services
The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 (DDA) does not make it a requirement that all buildings should be accessible to all. Rather, it says the the services available within buildings should be accessible to all. As from October 2004 service providers should have removed physical barriers to access, or reasonable adjustments should have been made to ensure that the services are available for everyone. Unfortunately, what some people consider to be a "reasonable adjustment" will not be the same as what other people consider to be "reasonable" and the DDA does not make this clear.
As long as a service provider has carried out an Access Audit which clearly sets out what adjustments have been made to cater for people with disabilities and the reasons why other things have not, or cannot, be done to accommodate them the service provider is complying with the law.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission can give more information on the DDA.
The Council's Access Officer is also available to give advice if required.
