Legal requirements for equality of disabled persons little known

People with disabilities encounter a large number of barriers in areas such as the world of work, in the provision of barrier-free housing or in public transport. But the needs of people with disabilities are also often not sufficiently taken into account in contact with public authorities - even though the Act on Equality for People with Disabilities (BGG) has required the federal administration to ensure participation and equality for years. Among many employees in public authorities, its requirements and important aids such as the use of plain language are little known, and interpreters for sign language are often not available. The BGG has also hardly played a role in case law to date. In addition to training courses for practitioners, there is an urgent need to better integrate the BGG with civil and social law. It would also make sense to strengthen the right of associations to sue in the BGG. This is the result of the evaluation of the law now published, in which the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute for Labor and Social Law (HSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation is involved. It was conducted by Prof. Dr. Felix Welti of the University of Kassel, among others.

It is not uncommon for official responsibilities or notices to be difficult to understand, even for people without disabilities. For people with impairments, access to the administration is even more often hardly possible without assistance and thus self-determined. This is the case, for example, when notices and information are not written in simple language or there is no wheelchair-accessible entrance to the office. Discrimination against people with disabilities is a structural problem. Collective redress and representation of interests are particularly important so that those affected are not left to fend for themselves. The company representatives of people with disabilities, the severely disabled representatives (SBV), are key players in the fight against discrimination. German law has many regulations that have been enacted for the purpose of equality. However, there is often a lack of a coordinated system, which severely hinders this goal as well as the enforcement of rights, the study finds.

In order to prevent discrimination by public authorities and to create accessibility in contact with them, the BGG was enacted in 2002 and reformed in 2016. The law is intended to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) and the prohibition of discrimination in the Basic Law. The evaluation commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and conducted by HSI researchers Dr. Johanna Wenckebach, Antonia Seeland and Prof. Dr. Daniel Hlava in cooperation with the University of Kassel (Department of Social and Health Law, Law of Rehabilitation and Disability in the Humanities Faculty, headed by Prof. Dr. Felix Welti), the Institute for Social Research and Social Policy GmbH (including Dr. Dietrich Engels) and the Institute for Social Research and Communication was intended to show how the amended BGG is to be assessed and how it works in practice.

For their report, the researchers intensively evaluated the legal literature, further equality law and case law, and interviewed more than 3,000 people online or by telephone: a good 2,200 employees in the federal administration, about 600 people with disabilities, a good 440 in representatives for severely disabled persons, and almost 140 experts working in legal protection representations of social associations and the DGB. Interviews were also conducted on specific topics with representatives of associations and institutions such as the Federal Agency for Accessibility or the Federal Commissioner and individual state commissioners for people with disabilities.

The BGG obligates authorities of the federal administration in particular to ensure equality for people with disabilities and to create accessibility. Authorities of the federal administration are, for example, the Federal Statistical Office, federal health insurance companies such as Barmer GEK or the Federal Employment Agency. State authorities may also be obliged to comply with the BGG if they implement federal law. Otherwise, they are bound by the corresponding laws of the states. The BGG thus applies to the entire federal administration and also has a guiding function for procedural regulations of the federal authorities and the Länder BGG.

Press release of the Hans Böckler Foundation. The full text can be found here.