A new campaign aimed at ensuring that people with disabilities can have access to jobs and services will be launched by the Equality Authority today.
It comes at a time when one in five of all cases brought to the Equality Authority are from people with disabilities, complaining about discrimination in employment under the Equal Employment Act, or in service provision under the Equal Status Act.
Disabled people are outnumbered only by women in equal employment equality cases, and by Travellers in equal status cases.
The campaign will include television advertisements, the first to be shown tonight, and is the largest and most expensive waged by the authority. It is part-funded by the European Year for People with Disabilities.
The campaign comes as Ireland gears up for more demanding legislation in the area of disability, when the EU Framework Employment Directive is incorporated into Irish law later this year.
This will require employers to make provision for people with disabilities unless this places a "disproportionate burden" on them.
This strengthens the existing Irish legislation in this area which only requires employers to make provision for people with disabilities if the cost is nominal.
However, recent case law defined this in the context of the overall resources of the company so a company with considerable resources would have to make more investment in making its environment open to disabled people than a firm with limited resources.
The campaign will centre around the provision in the equality legislation that "reasonable accommodation" be provided for people with disabilities.
This means that employers should ensure that access to the workplace, facilities at work stations, and the requirements of the job should all be accessible to a person with a disability.
Service providers will also be asked to ensure that people with disabilities can access their services.
This means that all buildings containing a service should be wheelchair accessible, that notices be available in Braille, for example, and other measures be implemented to ensure equal participation.