Finally a court case has upheld the requirements of the Disability Descrimination Act DDA which makes it a requirement for all service providers to provide accessible buildings and make reasonable adjustments to existing buildings.
The Act came in in October 2004 and it has taken 5 years before a judge has ruled on a high profile case such as this without the company involved settling out of court to keep things quiet.
18 year old student David Allen was awarded £6,500 damages after he took legal action after the Royal Bank of Scotland failed to to make its Church Street branch in Sheffield wheelchair accessible.
RBS have also been istructed to carry out the necessary work to make the propery accessible at an estimated cost of £200,000
There have been other cases over the years, but none of these have been decided by a court, now that this one has it could become a precedence and hopefully encourage other service providers to make the changes they are legally obliged to do.
The days of the DDA being totally ignored are hopefully numbered and this could lead to far greater equality for disabled people throughout the UK.