Our legal and regulatory requirements

BT's Policies and Guidelines for serving disabled people are based on The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), the UK's main piece of law in relation to disabled people. Part III of the DDA relating to the supply of goods and services came into force in 1999. It states that it is against the law for a service provider such as BT to:

Refuse to serve a disabled person
Offer a disabled person a service which isn't as good as a service being offered to a non-disabled person
To provide a service to a disabled person on different terms to those given to a non-disabled person
Provide goods or services in a way that makes it unreasonably difficult or impossible for a disabled person to use the goods or service

This means that BT has a duty to make "reasonable adjustments" for our disabled customers. This includes providing extra help or making changes to the way we provide our services. We are also bound by the General Conditions of the Communications Act and BT's Universal Service Condition (4). Some of the things we are obliged to do for our disabled customers include:

Provide Textphone users with access to the emergency services, operator assistance and directory information services using short codes and textphone call progress announcements
Provide a priority fault repair scheme
Offer to provide contracts and bills in alternative formats (such as Braille)
Ensure 75% of public call boxes are reasonably accessible to wheelchair users.

For more information visit the sites below.

General Conditions of Entitlement in PDF format

Universal Service Conditions in PDF format

Please note these documents require you to have Acrobat Reader on your computer to view them. If you do not have this you can download Acrobat Reader for free.

Disability Rights Commission website