Understanding Disability Discrimination : Life, Investment & Superannuation Association of Australia
| Speech
given by Elizabeth Hastings, Disability Discrimination Commissioner 1993-97 at the Second Annual Summit, Canberra, 23 May 1997 |
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Introduction
The topic I have been asked to address is "Understanding Disability Discrimination". In some ways I think I have been asked to teach my grandmother to suck eggs (though I am sure my own venerable forebear did no such thing!). I would say that there is no industry more skilled in the art of disability discrimination than the insurance and superannuation industry. Before you decide I am irretrievably biased against your work let me explain that, of course, I understand such discrimination is the basis of your enterprise. You must work out the acceptable risk, the chance of this potential disability being more likely than another, or that combination of circumstances more debilitating and costly than another, in order for your industry to make sense at all. The difference in our perspectives is not disability discrimination per se, but lawful and unlawful discrimination on the basis of disability.
Relevant Provisions of the Act
The Disability Discrimination Act, which has now been in effect for over four years, has three main objects: first, to eliminate, as far as possible, discrimination against people on the ground of disability in various areas of life; second, to ensure, as far as practicable, that people with disabilities have the same rights to equality before the law as the rest of the community; and, third, to promote the recognition and acceptance within the community of the principle that people with disabilities have the same fundamental rights as the rest of the community.The "various areas of life" I just mentioned include employment, education, access to premises, public transport, sports, accommodation and real estate, banking and finance; and the provision of goods, services and facilities - and that includes the insurance and superannuation industry. Although the focus today is on you as providers of goods, services and facilities, please remember that you may also be employers and managers, or have other relevant relationships with people who have disabilities, and the DDA applies in those areas also.
Discrimination is defined in the Act as "disability discrimination" in section 5, or "indirect disability discrimination" in section 6, and both concepts are relevant to your work. Section 5 states that disability discrimination has occurred if a person treats or proposes to treat the aggrieved person less favourably than, in circumstances that are the same or not materially different, the discriminator treats or would treat a person without the disability. Circumstances are not seen to be materially different simply because different accommodation or services may be required by the person with a disability.
Most complaints under the Act concerning insurance and superannuation would fall into the direct discrimination basket in that in general you would be refusing or restricting cover because of the disability. The question to be considered in the management of such a complaint would be whether the refusal or restriction was reasonable in the circumstances and therefore not an unlawful act, or not reasonable and so an unlawful act.
Indirect disability discrimination has occurred if the discriminator requires the aggrieved person to comply with a requirement or condition (a) with which a substantially higher proportion of persons without the disability comply or are able to comply; and (b) which is not reasonable in the circumstances of the case; and (c) with which the aggrieved person does not or is not able to comply. An example of this may be the requirement that a person have a driver's licence for identification: this would indirectly discriminate against a person who is legally blind, or a person who by reason of some other disability was not able to drive.
Furthermore, section 10 states that if an act is done for two or more reasons and one of these, whether or not it is the dominant or a substantial reason, is the disability of the person, then for the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act the act is taken to have been done for that reason.
Complaints and Hearings
I thought I'd get the jaw-crunching legal jargon over in one go so I can now be more poetic and lyrical as I try to bring to life the application of these provisions to your industry.As Disability Discrimination Commissioner I am responsible for the handling of all complaints under the Act, and for the promotion of the objects of the Act. In complaint handling there are certain threshold questions which must be asked: if the alleged event has occurred, does it constitute unlawful discrimination within the terms of the Act? Has there been less favourable treatment? Was that treatment because of the disability? Was it reasonable in the circumstances? Is there a condition or requirement imposed which has a differential and negative effect on a person who has a disability? Are the special services or adjustments required by the person who has a disability reasonable under the particular circumstances, or would they constitute an unjustifiable hardship for the service provider?
Sometimes these questions can be answered on the face of the information available, and sometimes the matter is in sufficient dispute to require referral for a hearing and decision by the Commission or, when the amending legislation is passed, by the Federal Court. I consider the hearing and decision process essential to the clarification of the law, to the teasing out of the meaning of such concepts as "unjustifiable hardship" and "inherent requirements". This clarification is necessary not only for those whose rights are protected by the legislation, but also for those who have the obligation to comply with it. As in all similar situations there are ambit claims made by each party, and eventually a balance must be achieved within the provisions and objects of the law.
Such a balance requires the recognition by each party of the experience and legitimate expectations of the other. It requires, for example, the recognition that your industry is just that - a profit making business, not a welfare service provider. You and your shareholders have a legitimate expectation of adequate returns on your investments. At the same time, people who have disabilities are equal citizens of this country and have a legitimate expectation of access to the goods and services you offer and advertise so attractively.
Of the complaints under the Act, by far the largest number relate to employment (approximately 42%) and to access to premises, goods, facilities and services (around 37%). The next largest group is complaints relating to education, and then insurance matters. So far there have been about 50 complaints about refusal or limitation of insurance cover of various kinds, and the number being lodged with the Commission is rapidly increasing. Feedback from the community leads me to anticipate even more complaints in this area as diverse advocacy and representative groups continue to educate their membership about their rights under the DDA.
The two complaint categories of education and insurance are, oddly, very similar in their typical pattern of progress: there is investigation then, if the matter is not declined, a failure or refusal of conciliation, referral for hearing by the Commission, and confidential settlement immediately before or during the hearing. This settlement usually consists of granting to the complainant the service or facility that was refused in the first place. In both cases I think the interested sector is reluctant to allow a tribunal to dictate policy or practice. The result of this pattern is that there is as yet little development of case law in either area. Essential concepts such as "reasonableness" and "unjustifiable hardship" have not been teased out and the clarity that emerges from decisions, and from appeals from decisions, is not yet available to us.
When I refer a matter for hearing I am often hoping that at last there will be some guidance on these difficult areas, but alas! this is not, at least so far, to be.
Industry Considerations
In the absence of such guidance, let me now consider some of the considerations that arise in your industry, and issues to be taken into account as you seek to comply with the Act - which I hope you do! I have read an address given by Alister Bayston to this meeting last year in which he reached the conclusion that the best risk management strategy against a disability discrimination complaint is compliance. Mr. Bayston went on to say that this would be facilitated by industry guidelines, reviewing of current underwriting practice, and development of an Action Plan. This is all very sound advice, which I am about to give you again.Nearly all the complaints received by the Commission concerning insurance are made under section 24 of the Disability Discrimination Act. Section 24(1) makes it unlawful for you to refuse to provide goods or services, or to discriminate in the terms or manner in which you provide goods or services, to a person with a disability.
Section 46
Insurers are singled out as one of the very few groups given special consideration under the Act (the other two are charities and the armed forces). Section 46 of the Act provides that insurers and providers of superannuation may in certain circumstances be exempted from liability for what would otherwise be unlawful discrimination. This is a special concession to your industry but not a blanket protection. To gain the protection of the section you must come within its wording. To begin with, the exception only applies if you are refusing to offer a person with a disability an annuity, a life insurance policy, an accident or other policy of insurance or membership to a superannuation provident fund or provident scheme, or if you are discriminating against them in the terms upon which you are offering any of these products.If your discrimination relates to any other activity, for example employment or access to your premises or information, then the fact that you are engaged in the business of superannuation or insurance is irrelevant and you are subject to sections of the Act prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of disability in the same way as any other employer or business enterprise.
To be protected by section 46 you must also show, if your discrimination is based on actuarial or statistical data, that it is reasonable for you to rely on this data and that you have acted reasonably having regard to content of the data and other relevant factors. If there is no actuarial or statistical data reasonably available to you then you must demonstrate that your discrimination was reasonable taking into account all other relevant factors.
At various times it has been suggested that the representatives or advocates of people with disabilities should provide your industry with data to support their assertion that they should be given access to insurance cover. It is, however, a legal principle with exceptions clauses in legislation that the onus of proof is on the person who wishes to rely on the exception. That is, in the handling of any complaint whether at the stage of preliminary investigation or at hearing, it is up to your industry to prove that your decisions come within the exception, not for the complainant to prove that they do not.
If you cannot satisfy these tests you fall outside the exception given to insurers under section 46 of the Act and you may be liable for unlawful discrimination in the provision of goods or services under section 24. The only defence you may then have is if you can establish that providing the goods and services to the person with a disability would cause you unjustifiable hardship. In determining unjustifiable hardship all relevant circumstances must be taken into account, including the effect of the disability; the nature of the benefits and detriments likely to accrue or be suffered by the person with a disability; your financial circumstances and the estimated costs involved in your providing the goods or service; and whether you have lodged an Action Plan with the Commission.
I have gone into section 46 in some detail because it is often cited as a blanket exception for any decision made by an insurance underwriter. This it is not.
Information Upon Which it Reasonable to Rely
Now this question of actuarial or statistical data is one with which your industry must eventually get to grips. The use of underwriting manuals has been explained to me: I understand that they have been built up over many years from data derived from insurance experience, expert opinion and medical studies from around the world, and that they are the foundation of underwriting practice in Australia. I believe AMP is the only insurance company in Australia to have its own company manual, and I am conscious that the development of such manuals is a lengthy and probably expensive enterprise. Nevertheless, it may need to be done in order that the statistical and actuarial tables from which you work are appropriate for decision making within the Australian legislative context, and can be reliably used as a defence to a complaint.Manuals based on an insurance experience which excludes the experience of insuring people who have disabilities are manuals with a gap. They do not include the relevant data, yet are used to make decisions about the absent group.
It is at this point in discussions that I am usually regaled with an anecdote to illustrate that the decisions are usually correct anyway. I then produce a counter-anecdote to demonstrate that such a decision may not be correct. Indeed, for every insurance disaster anecdote you can provide, people with disabilities can provide a story about a person who had a disability and could have been insured for a thousand years without making a claim. It seems to me that duelling with "anecdotes at 40 paces" is not going to be an efficient way to approach this issue!
The fact is that your industry does not possess information, or at least not sufficient information, about the realities of insuring people with disabilities. Now I must say at this point that under the legislation the word "disability" means a wide range of conditions including some which are life-long and stable, and others which are rapidly progressing. It includes blindness from birth as a result of over-oxygenation and adult onset blindness which results from diabetes or injury; it includes cerebral palsy and the results of stroke; it includes cognitive and intellectual disabilities of all kinds and acquired brain injury; it includes deafness and psychiatric illnesses. It includes work injury, HIV+ status, and other infectious diseases.
Clearly when I am talking to you about "disability" I am aware that some of these conditions will be greater insurance risks than others, and it may not be unlawful discrimination to refuse to cover them. However to refuse insurance to a healthy young man or woman who has lived since birth with a non-degenerative blindness and who now seeks to protect his or her family may be unlawful. Do you have actuarial data to substantiate the commonly held assumption that this person is more likely to die early, or have a serious accident, than any body else? Certainly people who are blind may make insurance claims: the question is not are they represented at all in your claim statistics, but are they over represented? Only if they are over represented can you legitimately refuse or modify their cover, but your reinsurance manuals do not, I think, give you these data. Most of the information in these manuals is based on data about so-called standard people insured at standard rates; because people with disabilities are generally excluded from obtaining insurance these records do not provide adequate guidance on risk assessment.
At a meeting in November with representatives of your industry we discussed this problem of lack of information. It was agreed that some of the discrimination may be prevented if insurers were to give full consideration to the individual's life, work history and previous accident history rather than to generalized assumptions. This would require some training of staff, and perhaps a more personalized assessment than may be common over the counter, and may be a topic covered in DDA guidelines for insurers, which I shall come to later.
If in any specific complaint you wish to rely on a defence of unjustifiable hardship under
section 11, information about the complainant's life, work history and previous accident history are among those things that must be considered, which include "the effect of the disability" and "all relevant circumstances of the particular case". It would therefore behove you to take such information into account in the first place.
It was also suggested at the meeting that funding may need to be found by the industry for a project to gather information appropriate to the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act. One possibility was the obtaining of agreement from a number of insurers to share the risks of insuring a group of people with a particular disability in an attempt to begin the collection of data. Given that anti-discrimination legislation in relation to disability exists in only a few countries, it is probable that the best way to get the information you need is to conduct the research yourselves. Certainly the more time that passes the less reasonable will it seem to the Commission or to the Federal Court that your industry does not support its decisions with proper statistical information. Another major profit making industry, the pharmaceutical industry, does spend significant time and money on actuarial and statistical research: it is possible and should be considered.
Commercial Judgement
I have been told about various "historical and fundamental practices" which underpin your industry. One of these, it has been suggested, is your right to exercise commercial judgement in respect of existing ailments because many claims occur not as a result of an inability to work, but rather as a result of changed circumstances such as retrenchment, change in job requirements, or other events associated with the vagaries of modern working life. It would be more appropriate, and more in keeping with Australia's anti-discrimination legislation, that when a person with an existing disability or ailment is seeking insurance, exclusions relating to these circumstantial changes be written into the cover rather than that the person be refused insurance. In the current uncertain employment environment I imagine this might apply whether or not an applicant has an existing disability or ailment.I am also told that there are risks associated with the fact that many members of our society are willing to commit insurance fraud, a risk category commonly referred to as "moral risk". I accept that to ignore such a risk is to ignore reality, but I certainly do not accept that people who have disabilities present a higher "moral risk" than do other members of the community, simply by virtue of having a disability or ailment.
It has been suggested to me that insurers protect policy holders against the risk of fraudulent claims and consequent raised premiums by limiting the amount of insurance cover available and by excluding from contracts existing medical conditions that could form the basis of a claim. I am told that "these exclusions are applied not in the expectation that the condition will, in all probability, lead to disability but rather that the risk could be used as the basis of a claim based on a change in circumstances, or a simply fraudulent claim". This is a direct quote from an explanation I was given about commercial judgement. As it stands this explanation is fair and square section 5 direct disability discrimination. It is exactly the same as saying to members of any racial or ethnic group: "We've had trouble with your kind before, you can't come in here", or to a woman: "You may go off and get pregnant, no we will not employ you". I would suggest that a more appropriate commercial judgement would be to stop that kind of decision making forthwith! It is unlawful.
Your industry will need to work out some other way to protect itself from fraudulent claims than the easy, cheap and unlawful route of excluding people who have ailments or disabilities "just in case". I am quite sure that numerous anecdotes could be produced to support such a practice, but any number of anecdotes do not an actuarial, statistical or legal defence make. Again, people with disabilities could produce an equal number to demonstrate their honesty, reliability and longevity.
Use of Expert Opinion
Another fundamental industry practice is the use of expert opinion to assist underwriters to assess overall risk, particularly where there is more than one ailment or condition. Of course such expert opinion would be basic to much of your decision making and the Act has nothing to say against this where the medical opinion is appropriate. However not all disabilities are medical conditions or require the attention of a doctor. Furthermore a person with a stable, perhaps from childhood, disability such as deafness is, I would suggest, no more likely than any other person to develop further disabilities or illnesses. Indeed, persons who have lived with their disability for a very long time may well be less likely to have accidents as they have learned to be very alert to what is happening around them. Blind people, for example, are specially trained in environmental safety: when you observe the stupidity of many pedestrians you may be forgiven for thinking everybody should be subjected to such training! People with other disabilities have often given more consideration to the ergonomics of their work environment than the average person, and are consequently less likely to develop extra work related disabilities.Some types of disability may be more problematic for actuaries and statisticians to draw conclusions about, but there should nevertheless be more substance to your decision making than anecdote or tradition. One in five people in Australia, for example, have received treatment at some time in their lives for a mental illness of some kind. Many people experience an episode of depression for which they take medication or have some other psychological intervention and from which they recover with no expectation of recurrence - such an episode may be related to work stress, bereavement, the burning down of a house, the illness of a loved one, or any other "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Other conditions, such as certain types of epilepsy or diabetes, once unpredictable in their prognosis and expression, are now largely controlled by medical intervention and supervision. In all such areas you will need to be able to support your decisions in the event of a complaint.
All human beings are in the lottery for cancer, heart disease, stroke and the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to". There is, as far as I know, no reason to believe that someone who was born with cerebral palsy is more likely than anybody else to develop, say, cancer later in life, and such an applicant for insurance should be subjected to no more screening than is required for everybody in relation to family background and personal history. If, indeed, there is reason to believe there is a greater chance of this co-morbidity, this should be evidenced through statistics not anecdote. Again, the fact that someone with a disability makes a claim relating to some other ailment is not automatic proof that the group is a greater risk - there must be a disproportionate number of claims in from this group in relation to their incidence in the community, and in comparison to other insured persons, before you can lawfully refuse or limit cover.
Again it becomes clear that underwriters must begin to consider the individual making the application, not some vaguely appreciated class of disability to which that person may belong. As well as medical opinion it may be appropriate to seek the expertise of other professional groups such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists, mobility trainers and so on.
You will see from my examples that I am not suggesting people with active disease processes are a good risk, though in some cases for some kinds of insurance such as temporary travel insurance or house insurance, they may well be. Disability comes so many forms, and is lived with in so many ways by so many different people: indeed, 18% of the population has a disability even by the conservative definition used by the Bureau of Statistics. There may be a difference in life experience and attitude between those who have lived with their disability since childhood and those who have developed one later in life perhaps as a result of illness or workplace negligence. All research shows that people with what may be termed "traditional" disabilities such as blindness, post-polio paralysis, cerebral palsy, deafness, intellectual disability and so on are reliable workers who take less sick leave than their colleagues, have fewer absences, fewer work accidents or injuries, and stay in one work place longer than do other workers. It follows that they make fewer accident insurance claims, fewer income protection insurance claims, and are less of a drain on the superannuation funds! Why then is there this suspicion that they are a poor risk?
It this knowledge about themselves and about their colleagues that produces such outrage when insurance applications are refused, or offered only with higher premium.
I note a comment in the latest Annual Report of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal that. of all the complaints received during the year within jurisdiction, the ones that have caused the most controversy are those disability matters requiring medical evidence, over which the Tribunal has had jurisdiction since November 1995. Clarification of this area as soon as possible will clearly be of benefit to the whole industry.
As you see, we come once again to the necessity for this industry in this country to begin to accumulate the facts and figures which will enable you to make reasonable decisions, and which will give access for people with disabilities to the benefits and services of the insurance industry.
Time Lines
I was the representative of the Attorney-General on the public transport disability Standards steering committee which, after much negotiation, discussion and inevitable compromise on various sides, produced a draft Standard deemed by the Australian Transport Council to be a technically feasible method of providing accessible public transport. (The draft is now undergoing a Regulation Impact Statement process.) Built into this Standard is an implementation schedule within which those items that are most easily accomplished will be done within one or three or five years; those which are the most difficult to achieve have a time line of twenty years, with extensions possible in cases of demonstrated unjustifiable hardship.I am also involved in giving advice to the revision of the Building Code of Australia currently being undertaken by the Australian Building Codes Board. The BCA is concerned only with new buildings, however there is still the matter of existing buildings to be considered: it is highly likely that there will be some long time line for this area also, as it is not possible to convert every building all at once.
In relation to your industry statistics and actuarial data, it is clearly necessary to take the time that it takes to develop such a resource for your decision making, it cannot be done faster than it can be done. If it could be demonstrated that the research was under way this would be taken into account in the investigation and hearing of complaints. Of course, despite the requirement in the legislation for appropriate actuarial data, you may assert that medical science is so fast moving now that such tables are obsolete even before they are finished. If this is so, then you must rely on "taking into account all other relevant factors" as referred to in section 46. In either case it is necessary that you begin to collect information about insured lives and other relevant factors which would influence and support underwriting decisions. Given that there is no doubt that this takes time, you may be well advised to develop an Action Plan.
Action Plans
An Action Plan that complies with section 61 of the Act is a strategy for changing those practices of any provider of goods, services or facilities which might result in discrimination (intentional or unintentional) against people with disabilities. It will result in the elimination as far as possible of discrimination from your services, will minimize consumer complaints to the Commission, and should increase market share by making access more widely available to people with disabilities. If, as people with disabilities contend, a significant number of potential customers are good risks, then enabling them to use your services, to make inquiries, and to take out policies must be of benefit to both parties.An Action Plan must include provisions relating to: a review of current practices with a view to the identification of any that may be discriminatory; the devising of policies and programs to achieve the objects of the DDA; the setting of goals and targets against which the success of the plan in achieving those objects might be assessed; the means of evaluating the policies and programs; allocation of responsibility within the organisation; and communication of these policies and programs.
I have spoken enough about the need for appropriate information upon which you can base your decisions about whether or not to insure any individual applicant. There are other matters relating to your industry where there may be direct or indirect discrimination on the basis of disability. One that springs immediately to mind is the accessibility of your premises: an Action Plan could contain a schedule for upgrading your facilities including front door access, internal layout such as height of counters, visibility and readability of signs and notices, accessible toilets where these are provided to the public, and so on. Another area is accessibility of information: do you have information available upon request in alternative formats such as plain English or audio tape; do your offices have a TTY telephone for the deaf; are the forms that must be filled in by applicants available in alternative formats such as large print or electronic format? A solution may be as simple as ensuring that your HTML mark up and Home Page on the Internet is formatted in a way that does not exclude people who are blind and who use special readers and scanners for electronic communication. Such an adjustment requires about half-an-hour's careful consideration before preparing a document for the Internet. I have put some (appropriately formatted!) draft guidelines on our own Home Page for community comment, and you may wish to refer to these.
Then there is the accessibility of your service in terms of staff training and awareness of the particular requirements of people with different disabilities, such as those with a speech impairment or intellectual disability.
All these areas, and many more as they say in the ads, are the legitimate province of an Action Plan. They are also the legitimate province of a complaint. This is why it would be a good idea for your industry to consider the development of such Plans. The very best way to do this is to develop a reference group of people with disabilities who may be users of your services and who can assist you both in identifying inadvertent barriers to access, and in developing solutions.
If an Action Plan has been lodged with the Commission it will be taken into consideration in the handling of a complaint, and at a hearing. The existence of an Action Plan, if communicated to your customers or potential customers who have disabilities, will in any case reduce the likelihood of complaints being lodged: people who have disabilities are busy people too - if they know a particular office is to be upgraded for accessibility according to some reasonable schedule of works, then they are not likely to waste time with a complaint. Of course, they may try to negotiate moving a particular office up the list!
I have now received about 40 Action Plans from a wide range of businesses and corporate service providers including Telstra, the ABC, several local councils, universities and small business. I am currently assisting a major industry association to develop a model Action Plan for use by its constituents. It would seem to me that your industry could either leave Action Plan development to individual insurance companies, or individual agencies, or you could consider developing a model for the industry which would assist your membership to work towards discrimination free service delivery and the production of Action Plans at whatever level was considered appropriate. My office would be most willing to assist you in the development of a model Action Plan; indeed we are at the moment preparing seminars on this topic.
An Action Plan is not a complete defence against a complaint, and a Plan which merely sits on a shelf in some manager's office is no defence at all. An Action Plan is evidence of good faith and good intention, and should contain a schedule for implementation and evaluation so the Commission and any consumers with disabilities, as well as the service provider, can be assured that there is Action after the Plan.
Industry Guidelines
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has as one of its functions the issuing of guidelines in areas covered by the legislation. At my November meeting with representatives of your industry, and of people with disabilities, it was agreed that the Commission should begin preparing draft guidelines which would be circulated for comment prior to another meeting of relevant stakeholders and organisations. This is now in progress and I am hoping to have a draft available within a few months. In the first instance these guidelines will probably take the form of practice notes, with particular focus on the section 46 exception in the Act, and on what would constitute reasonable information upon which to rely.Exclusion Clauses
Finally there is the matter of exclusion clauses: representatives of people with disabilities have a great interest in this area in that exclusion clauses can be used both to enlarge the client group and potential benefit, or to diminish these. People who have disabilities often consider a properly drafted exclusion clause would enable them to meet their primary requirement of reasonable access to insurance and other relevant benefits. People who live daily with their disabilities are capable of being realistic about their strengths and limitations. On the whole they do not demand that which is unreasonable: they have made compromises with many aspects of life and are aware of the need for some compromise in some areas of your industry and service. I think you would find unreasonableness no more prevalent in this group than in any as-yet-not-disabled group of customers. Therefore perhaps your industry could consider the individual negotiation and use of carefully worded exclusion clauses and waivers as a way of expanding your market and meeting consumer demand.Concluding Clauses
These are complicated and challenging issues. I trust that my remarks have stimulated your thinking and your creative problem solving talents. I further hope you are assured that the Disability Discrimination Act is not specifically designed to put you out of business; indeed, it was in part especially designed to accommodate your business.The Act exists because it was necessary to protect the rights of those Australians whose disabilities have for so long been used to exclude them from the ordinary benefits and responsibilities of citizenship, and to clarify the obligations of community and business sectors. Where exclusion is unnecessary or unreasonable it must stop. Where adjustments can reasonably be made to enable people who have disabilities to participate in and contribute to society, then these adjustments should be made. If necessary adjustments are nevertheless an unjustifiable hardship, then failure to make them is not unlawful.
So this, like all important journeys, brings us again to our beginning: your industry relies upon fine discriminations, and that's fine - provided those discriminations are not unlawful. I look forward to further discussion and cooperation between us as we develop industry guidelines and a clearer understanding of unlawful disability discrimination. With a commitment to compliance with the DDA, the development of appropriate statistical and actuarial information bases, and the creation of Action Plans for non-discriminatory service provision your industry will both protect itself from complaints and enlarge its customer base.
Thank you for your attention.