The chairman of the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) has accused the government of having a “lazy” attitude to tackling discrimination in the workplace.
At the launch of an advertising campaign to highlight the impact of disability discrimination in the UK, DRC chairman Bert Massie said the government had failed to break the culture of low expectations surrounding disability.
“There is a lazy fatalism that too often shapes the perceptions that politicians have of disabled people,” he said.
“The inequality experienced by disabled people affects us all. For some reason, and despite all the facts, public policy makers are not thinking about disability. It is considered something ‘over there’ for the specialists to deal with. Something to do with wheelchairs and ramps.”
The DRC’s ‘Are we taking the Dis?’ campaign depicts unfair treatment towards disabled people and aims to promote a better culture for disabled people.
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The £1.2m national poster, press, radio and online campaign will run for one month. In one of the ads, for example, a person in a wheelchair is shown sitting at a desk with the caption: ‘I’ll never get a seat on the board. I’ve got the wrong chair’.
Only 17% of people with learning disabilities are in paid work and disabled people in work earn 10% less on average than their non-disabled colleagues, according to the DRC.
