A law called the Equality Act.
As well as the Human Rights Act, another law also protects you from being treated unfairly. This is called the Equality Act.
The Equality Act applies if you live in England, Scotland or Wales. If you live in Northern Ireland, the law is different.
The Equality Act protects you from being treated unfairly for 9 different things. These are:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender reassignment
- Marriage or civil partnership
- Pregnancy or motherhood
- Race
- Religion or belief
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
Under the Equality Act, public sector organisations have to change their approach and the services they provide to ensure that they are accessible to disabled people, as well as everybody else. These are called making ‘reasonable adjustments’. This could mean making alterations to buildings, providing special equipment, changing the way services are run or altering training for staff to ensure that services work equally well for people with a learning disability and autistic people.
The Equality Act applies to public bodies and private bodies if they are serving people. For example:
- Private landlords
- Shops
- Employers
The Human Rights Act only applies to public bodies.
There is an easy read guide on the Equality Act