Disability discrimination: Putting rollers in hair and applying make-up are "normal day-to-day activities"

In Ekpe v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis 25.5.01 EAT 1044/00, the EAT reverses an employment tribunal's decision that a woman with an impairment of her right hand, constituting a weakness of some of the muscles required for its full function, did not have a disability for the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The tribunal erred in considering what the woman could still do, rather than what she could not do or had difficulty doing. She could not put rollers in her hair and sometimes had to use her left hand to apply her make-up, and yet the tribunal concluded, wrongly, that these were not "normal day-to-day activities". In the EAT's view, anything done by most women, or most men, is a "normal day-to-day activity".