According to the Disability Discrimination Act, a disabled person is the one who suffers from some sort of physical or mental impairment which has such a long term and adverse effect on the person that his ability to perform even the day-to-day activities gets impaired.

The definition discussed above has some special connotations. That is, “impairment” should be a substantial one and not a minor or trivial one; “long term” means that the impairment should be of at least 12 months; “day-to-day” activities means washing, eating, talking and other daily tasks.

The provisions under the Disability Discrimination Act offers a disabled person a lot of facilities in a lot of places like employment, public transport, education, buying or renting a property and easy access to a lot of goods, facilities and other services.

Recently a lot of changes have been made to the Disability Discriminating Act to help and accommodate the class of “disabled” people into our society. These include:

1. Making it illegal for public and private transporters to prohibit a disabled person from using special provisions alloted to a disabled person

2. A club which has more than 25 persons cannot prohibit a disabled person from joining the club because of his disability

3. Now there are some special provisions for a disabled person to live as tenant and it easy for disabled person to rent out a property

4. Making special provisions for people who are suffering from HIV, multiple sclerosis and cancer.

5. Apart from these, some relaxations are further granted to disabled people in the public areas. In a lot of everyday services like restaurants, hotels, offices, clubs, theaters, cinema halls and educational institutes, special provisions are made to make it easier for the disabled people to access them.

6. Not only this, a very powerful body “Disability Rights Commission” is set up to look after the civil rights of the disabled person.