I believe the way SFE and DSA-QAG handle DSA issues could be vastly improved. However, this particular decision strikes me as fundamentally right. The DDA - and, I assume, the forthcoming Equality Act - requires institutions actively to remove barriers, to avoid age-related criteria in making decisions, and to take positive steps to anticipate and remove discriminatory obstacles. Personally, I shudder at the idea of a faceless bureaucracy requiring a potential DSA recipient to jump through additional hoops on the basis of a day's difference in their date of birth. Flexibility and sympathetic judgment are what one would hope for from decision-makers in a society that cares for its citizens. "Given what can be achieved through intelligent and humane intervention," writes Amartya Sen , "it is amazing how inactive and smug most societies are about.....disability...Conceptual conservatism plays a significant role." (The Idea of Justice, Penguin, pp. 259-260). Something to bear in mind?
|