The 2026 EHRC Code: Everyone Missed the Disability Chapters

The Equality and Human Rights Commission laid its updated Code of Practice for services, public functions and associations before Parliament on 21 May 2026. By the time the 40-day scrutiny period ended on 30 June, the legal press had written thousands of words about it. Almost all of them were about one thing: the For Women Scotland ruling and what the Code now says about sex, gender and single-sex spaces.

That's understandable. The Supreme Court's 2025 judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 was a landmark ruling, and the EHRC's response in the updated Code was always going to generate headlines. But the focus on that single issue has left something important almost entirely undiscussed: the 2026 Code also substantially updated its guidance on disability, neurodivergence, reasonable adjustments and the anticipatory duty that every service provider in this country owes to disabled customers.

For venues, event organisers, sport bodies, entertainment companies and hospitality operators, it's those chapters that matter most. And almost nobody is talking about them.

What the legal press covered, and what it didn't

The pattern is striking. Hill Dickinson, Bevan Brittan, Birketts, DLA Piper and a string of HR publications all published summaries of the updated Code in May and June 2026. Every one of them led with the For Women Scotland implications. The disability material was either mentioned in a single paragraph or not at all.

There's a structural reason for this. Most of the commentary was written for HR and employment law audiences. The 2026 Code doesn't apply to employment — only to the provision of services to the public, the exercise of public functions, and the activities of associations. The employment Code of Practice, which is the one most HR professionals actually use, hasn't been updated since 2015 and there's currently no timetable to do so. So the commentary skewed toward what was relevant to its readership.

That leaves a gap. The organisations most directly affected by the updated disability guidance are service providers: venues, event promoters, ticketing platforms, transport operators, hospitality businesses. None of them are reading employment law blogs. And the trade press that does reach them, with one partial exception in the arts sector, hasn't covered the disability chapters at all.

What's actually new in the disability guidance

The 2026 Code replaces a version published in 2011. In the 15 years since, the volume of disability discrimination caselaw has grown substantially, the understanding of neurodivergence has shifted significantly, and the operating environment for service providers has changed beyond recognition. Digital booking, outsourced customer service, cashless access, app-based ticketing and remote support systems were not what the 2011 Code had in mind.

Three changes in the updated disability chapters stand out.

1. Neurodivergent conditions are now explicitly named

The 2026 Code expressly references ADHD, autism and dyslexia as falling within the Act's definition of mental impairment. This removes ambiguity that has existed since 2010. In practice, some service providers have resisted treating neurodivergence as a protected characteristic that triggers the reasonable adjustments duty, arguing that the person hadn't demonstrated sufficient impairment or that their condition wasn't in the same category as physical disability.

The updated Code closes that argument down. If a customer or attendee has ADHD, autism or dyslexia, the duty to consider reasonable adjustments applies. The question isn't whether their condition qualifies. It's whether your service puts them at a substantial disadvantage, and if so, what you're doing about it.