The Equality Act was introduced in 2010 (revised 2013) and it brings together and replaces all previous anti-discrimination laws such as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The Equality Act places a duty of care on all organisations in Great Britain that provide a service to the public or a section of the public and those organisations providing goods and services to ensure that they take reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled employees or users of their services (customers) are not at a ‘substantial’ disadvantage in comparison to employees or customers who are not disabled. It is important to note that the Equality Act is about people and equal opportunities and it does not contain any performance based or technical specifications for buildings, facilities or environment. In terms of the physical built environment, guidance on what may constitute reasonable provision for disabled people can be obtained from several sources, the main ones being BS8300:2009+A1:2010 ‘Design of buildings and their approaches to meet the needs of disabled people - Code of practice’, and Building Regulations 2010, Access to and Use of Buildings, Approved Document M. For projects where due consideration to the needs of visually impaired people is required, the Document M specifically stipulates that sufficient visual contrast will be achieved if the difference in Light Reflectance Value (LRV), between adjacent critical surfaces, such as walls, ceilings, doors and floors, is greater than 30 points. Where illuminance on surfaces is greater than 200 lux, a difference in light reflectance values should be a minimum of 20 points. With the Crown Paints Scan colour codification system, the middle two digits of the colour code show the light reflectance value of a colour. EQUALITYACT
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