Posted By P Wright Although indg 36 - Working with VDUs advises that employers need to look at any special needs of individual staff, I have come up against a problem where an employer is refusing to provide a chair that a (disabled) member of staff is physically capable of adjusting for themselves in order to use a VDU comfortably. This is a hot-desking, shift environment where at least 20 different people could use the terminal in one month. Although the chairs supplied meet the minimum reqs. of the DSE regs., this particular person is neither tall enough nor heavy enough to adjust it. The employer reckons they have done enough by providing a chair that suits most people - I disagree. Could anyone suggest areas I could look towards for further guidance other than the DSE Regs?

Posted By chris duncan Show the employer this link and tell him to get his hand in his pocket!! http://www.jobcentreplus...orEmployers/AccessToWork

Posted By Neil Pearson In order to comply with Reg 3 of the DSE Regs, "the work chair shall be stable and allow the operator or user easy freedom of movement and a comfortable position". This refers to "the operator", not to "the average operator". If the actual operator (whoever it is at the time) can't achieve a comfortable position then the employer is in breach of this requirement.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Peter As you observe that 'The employer reckons they have done enough by providing a chair that suits most people, you may wish to know that at the IOSH meeting on H, S and disability organised by the London Met branch in January, the Legal Officer of the DRC made it crystal clear that she and the DRC would be relentless in their support of employees who pursued their rights in the situation you describe. As your directors need to understand clearly, there is in principle no upper limit to an award made under discrimination legislation. It is too easy to imagine that 'old style' fudging will do. On 10 June, I was reminded of how serious 'new style' non-discrimination is when a solicitor asked me to act as a single joint expert, in a claim for unfair dismissal, associated with dyslexia on the part of a risk manager, 50+ years of age, who has struggled in his work since it was changed with information technology. His claim is that the employer failed to make an appropriate assessment of the interaction between his impairment and the changed demands on him with the new work technology. I suspect that many employers would find that moderate expense, with the help of the Access to Work subsidies, would save greatly on hidden costs of an emormous amount of their most expensive factor of production, management time. Quite apart from a hefty penalty likely to be many times the cost of appropriate adjustments

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Geoff In answer to your vague question, the first conference on Human-Computer Interaction was held in 1982; there has been an exponential growth in research in this area since then. There is an enormous volume of literature on the subject; I am reasonably familiar with relevant sources as I specialised in it for my M Sc. If you need something more specific, please do say so. If you expected something 'more positive' than a legal comment iso far, that's a matter for you; I was answering the specific issue raised by P Wright, from my specialist knowledge of HCI as much as from moderate level of Health & Safety knowledge

Posted By J Knight In response to Geoff, I'd tend to look at the management regs ACOP for further instruction on this, as they are the primary interpretation of the framework directive, and they give definitions for many of the terms used in PPE regs, DSE regs etc. The ACOP specifically asks the question' who might be harmed, and how?' Now, I know this is teaching granny to suck eggs, for which apologies, but given the above, I reckon this isn't necessarily a DDA issue at all; yes you could invoke the DDA, but the management regs and HASAWA already place the employee at the heart of risk assessment. If your control measures don't address the safety of those at risk, then what are they for? No people, no risk, John

Posted By Geoff Burt I tend to agree with the last two responses in that this is not necessarily a DDA issue and could be resolved as Neil suggests. I find it a little disconcerting that the response of some is to immediately jump on the enforcement wagon when other avenues are yet to be explored. Geoff