8 - The Prohibition against Discrimination: Regulating for Equality through Retrofitting Inaccessible Systems

Summary

This chapter will analyse the extent to which the prohibition against discrimination found in anti-discrimination laws can enable persons with print disabilities to exercise their right to read. This chapter argues that the prohibition against discrimination in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States will not significantly reverse the book famine for persons with print disabilities. The legislative interventions amount to an imperfect and partial solution to the existence of significant inequalities.. The statutory regimes in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States bifurcates the prohibition against discrimination into two closed categories. In Australia and the United Kingdom the categories are referred to as direct and indirect discrimination, and in the United States the categories are referred to as disparate treatment and disparate impact.