Discrimination at the Interface: The Equality Act 2010 and Platform Interface Design

Abstract

Given their dominance in a range of sectors – from private renting to job search – the design of online platforms can impede access to markets and facilitate discrimination. Most legal scholarship on the equality implications of platform design focuses on algorithms. This paper instead interrogates the comparatively neglected issue of interface design. It argues that two areas of interface design – ‘structuring’ and ‘sorting’ functions – fall within the scope of the Equality Act 2010 as a ‘provision, criterion or practice’ that is not protected by a safe harbour. Drawing on web-scraping methods, it then provides an applied example of these arguments using ‘No DSS’ (Department for Social Security) discrimination on a leading rental platform in the UK. Using a sample of 3,336 listings collected years apart, the paper demonstrates how design choices in ‘structuring’ and ‘sorting’ interfaces can either facilitate or minimise discrimination on online platforms.