While this book examines disability discrimination law as a particular form of
legislation which attempts to redress discrimination against disabled people, it is
situated within a larger discursive context which seeks to understand the role of law
and geography in shaping social and material realities. In examining the United
Kingdom’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995, Equality Act (2010),
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 1990 and the Australian Disability
Discrimination Act (DDA) 1994, the book seeks to made wider arguments about
the efficacy of law in relation to its enforcement in varied geographical contexts.
In so doing, law itself is interrogated both epistemologically and ontologically.
The study conducted for the book encompassed a variety of methods – including
interviews, surveys and documentary analysis – across a range of contexts both
within the UK and outside it. As the various parts of the UK DDA came into effect
over a number of years, the book is designed to analyse these parts chronologically
and with increasing depth for the more recent parts. For example, Part 3 of the
DDA concerned Service Provision and this is the focus of Chapter 3 of the book.
Part 4 of the DDA, also known as the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
Act (SENDA) came into effect much later than Part 3 and is considered in great
detail in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. These latter chapters devote significant attention
to how Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in England and Wales responded to
SENDA for two main reasons. The first is that HEIs are effective examplars as
their activities encompass a wide range of the law’s constituent parts; not only
Part 4, but also Parts 2 (employment), 3 (service provision) and 5 (transport).
Therefore, examining HEIs enables a deeper understanding of how this legislation
translates across various social and geographical contexts.