Has Equality Act failed to address realities of disability discrimination?

The wording of the Equality Act states that employers should take such steps as it is reasonable to avoid disadvantage related to a "physical feature" of the work environment or "provision of an auxiliary aid". The new Act wraps the Disability Discrimination Act  into a statute covering disability and eight other areas of discrimination.

Schindler argued yesterday that this focus on the built environment and auxiliary aids ignores the issues about management style and the need to look at the employees life in the round, sometimes referred to as the biopsychosocial model.  This is ironic given that the same government that drafted the Equality Act also backed Black's recommendations. "This is a real missed opportunity in the legislation because it doesn't take us far enough," Schindler said.

This will be especially problematic for employers when dealing with mental health issues, including those related to stress, and this was the key concern of the delegates I talked to at the conference yesterday. Schindler's point is that there was an opportunity to use the law to encourage employers to address the management issues that often cause or aggravate employees' mental health problems.  This would prevent the problems developing and avoid both the risk of employment tribunal claims and also costly long term absence leave.
We will have to wait to see whether this leads to more case law and the risk of more big payouts to staff suffering stress at work once the Equality Act comes into force in October.