Appearance, Disability and the Law
Appearance, Disability and the Law

An original analysis of the law on disfigurement equality in employment and across other life contexts.

Hannah Saunders (Author)

9781009605045, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 August 2025

242 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm, 0.49 kg

People with disfigurements often face prejudice, exclusion and discrimination in employment and across other life contexts. Law's response to this evidence is flawed both by its own limited and illogical scope and its failure to understand the perspectives of those people who may need to use it. Drawing on interviews with both people with lived experience of disfigurement and employers, the book sketches out different approaches to the complex social problem of discrimination against people with visible differences. It also asks whether, in our changing social context, law should widen its protection beyond disfigurement. Would a protected characteristic of appearance offer viable legal rights to the many millions of us who do not have a disfigurement but who are prone to a few spots, whose ears stick out more than we would like, or who are carrying an extra stone in weight?

1. Introduction
2. Law's response to disfigurement inequality
3. Law's limited ambitions
4. The lived experience of visible difference
5. Disfigurement equality at work: employer perspectives
6. Defining disfigurement
7. Severity and complexity
8. Law and social change: are we expecting too much?
9. Alternative approaches in law and policy
10. Beyond disfigurement
11. Conclusion
Appendix 1: Model of good practice
Appendix 2: Empirical study information
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Medical & healthcare law [LNTM]