Human Rights Tracker Scotland: Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA)

The Scope of the EQIA

Following the results of the framing exercise, it was determined that a full EQIA was required. This EQIA considers the potential for this policy to impact equality with regards to the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. This EQIA does not consider the protected characteristic of marriage and civil partnership as the Tracker does not relate to work ^[1]. This assessment also gives due regard to the three needs of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED): eliminate unlawful discrimination; advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who don’t; and foster or encourage good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who don’t.

Publicly available resources of quantitative and qualitative information were used, including the Equality Evidence Finder, the Scottish Household Survey 2023, Office for National Statistics and Scottish Government and the Scottish Human Rights Commission webpages.

The Design Group has seen a summary of the evidence and was given the opportunity to undertake user testing. The Tracker is being developed using off the shelf software that has been customised to meet the specifications sets out in a Project Initiation Document developed with the Design Group. We expect the software to already comply with basic accessibility requirements and have commissioned an accessibility audit to ensure this. Any recommendations that flow from this will be considered, with the option to integrate additional accessibility features in future updates to the Tracker.