According to the Equality Act 2010, a person has a disability if s/he has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on that person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
As part of our tutorial we were given different scenarios which had occurred within a school environment and are asked to decide in groups whether we felt that discrimination was occurring. For example one scenario included a deaf child being excluded from a school trip to see a play because it was felt the child would not benefit from it and was instead to stay behind in school and watch a video of the play themselves. We felt this was discriminatory towards the child as they were being excluded from the class activity because they have a disability and were forcibly being isolated from the rest of their peers. We felt this could have negative effects on the child’s confidence and prevents the child from interacting and communicating with other children and therefore this solution was not in the best interest of the child. Thus we felt that that the school could try to come up with better solutions to accommodate the child such as giving them a copy of the script to read prior to seeing the play. Another idea was to ask the theatre if they offer interpreters for deaf people. After having done these scenarios it became apparent to me that it can be easy to discriminate against people having felt that it was in the best interest of the child, however it is important to ask the person themselves how they feel and what they feel would benefit them most to then have the most effective outcome.
As part of our second tutorial we were asked to describe a situation in which we witnessed discrimination. In our groups we discussed a situation where a girl suffered from a mental disability which caused her to have difficulty interacting with others and certain words would cause her to scream. As a result of this other children would say the words to cause the girl to scream for their own amusement. We felt like the school had not taken enough action to encourage the girl to socialise with other children or ensure that other children were being accommodating the the girls mental disability.
