You can easily ensure your service is accessible to deafblind customers by making reasonable adjustments.

The Equality Act 2010 (external link) sets out the rights of deafblind and other disabled people when using services such as shops, banks and restaurants.

Discrimination is illegal.

The Act makes it against the law for a business to refuse to offer a service to disabled people because of impairment or to increase the cost due to helping them.

The law says that people who provide services must make reasonable adjustments to enable disabled people to use them.

What is a reasonable adjustment?

What is reasonable depends on the size, resources and nature of your service. Ultimately only a court can decide what is reasonable in a particular situation.

For example, it would be reasonable for any service to allow a deafblind customer to communicate by using written notes, or to allow assistance dogs onto their premises.

But while it would be reasonable to expect large high street banks to provide their information in braille, it may not be reasonable to expect a small shop to do so. This is because of the financial constraints a small business may have compared to a large bank.

More information

Tips on
Providing good customer service to deafblind people and the pages below will help you to identify and make reasonable adjustments so that your service is accessible to deafblind people.

Recognising your deafblind customers

Communicating with your deafblind customers

Guiding your deafblind customers

You can also order a free copy of our "Serving your deafblind customers" booklet