Introduction and Key Concepts

This book explores the key human rights of access to justice and a fair public hearing in the context of disability discrimination in Britain. Its objective is to consider whether there are indications of barriers to justice for disabled claimants lodging discrimination claims at the Employment Tribunal in England and Wales. Our first chapter discusses the key concepts which are further developed throughout the book. First, we draw on the work of Goffman (1963) and Solanke (2017) to explain the notion of stigma and how it relates to disabled people, using this as a framework to critique the Equality Act 2010. We next consider what is meant by equality and outline the differences between formal equality and equality of opportunity and how these competing concepts create tension in the Equality Act 2010. We then analyse the two main models of disability, the medical and social model and suggest a way forward: the nuanced social model also known as the impairment effects model. These models provide a basis upon which disability is understood and we relate them to the Equality Act 2010. We conclude the chapter with the research questions we developed to meet our objective and brief summaries of the following eight chapters.