The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) aims to end the discrimination
that many disabled people face. Part 3 of the Act places duties on service
providers, which includes travel insurance and travel companies providing
services within the UK.
Companies have a duty to ensure that, as a disabled customer, they do
not treat you less favourably than other customers, for a reason
related to your disability, unless they can justify that treatment. So for
example, they must not unjustifiably refuse to provide a service to a
disabled person that they are prepared to offer other members of the
public, nor must they provide the service on worse terms or to a worse
standard.
However, the law allows travel insurers to apply special conditions or
premiums to disabled people in a particular set of circumstances. For
example they can charge a disabled person a higher premium if they can
show that there is a greater risk in insuring a disabled person than a
non-disabled person.
The travel insurance company can only justify this difference of treatment of
a disabled person if:
- the decision is based on information which is relevant to the
assessment of the risk being insured
- the information (such as statistical data, or a medical report) is
from a source on which it is reasonable to rely
- the less favourable treatment is reasonable when this information
and all other relevant factors are taken into account
The special rules on travel insurance are explained in Chapter 9 of the Code
of Practice - Rights of Access document published by the Disability
Rights Commission. The commission closed on 28 September 2007, but the
website is still available. The document can be downloaded from the
Disability Rights Commission's website in various formats.
