People with
disabilities
The following points should
be considered.
- Many disabled people have different needs and requirements when
it comes to being actively involved in public consultation exercises,
which could include seeking assistance from third parties to help
them understand written information and put together any reply.
This may mean that timescales on consultation need to be more
flexible, possibly extended in certain circumstances, and that
replies should be accepted by alternative means (including from
designated third parties).
- Part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) requires that
service providers make reasonable adjustments to any service they
provide in order to prevent it from being impossible or unreasonably
difficult for a disabled person to use. The position on what amounts
to a service within the terms of the DDA, and whether it is reasonable
or not to make adjustments to it, is complex and officials should
seek legal advice from in-house lawyers, if required. However,
as a matter of good practice, government bodies should look to
comply with the spirit as well as the letter of the law.
There are some
obvious groups where the format in which replies can also
be accepted will be a particular issue:
- British Sign Language (BSL) users -
may need to be consulted either through BSL products or
via specially constituted BSL seminars (the Government
has issued a position
statement which recognises that BSL is a language
in its own right and this reinforces the need to take
into account BSL users when consulting)
More detailed advice on preparing BSL, and other, products
is available in “Let’s make it accessible”.
www.disability.gov.uk
- Learning disabled people – will
need easy read versions of the consultation document and
it may be helpful to hold specially constituted seminars.
More detailed advice about preparing easy read documents
and running meetings involving people with learning disabilities
is available at -www.mencap.co.uk and - www.doh.gov.uk/learningdisabilities/taskforce.
The National Forum for people with learning disabilities
is the main representative body for people with learning
disabilities.
- Those who rely on information from the web
- many disabled people (most often the visually impaired,
access information most easily from the internet. The
latest legal advice is that provision of information via
a website should be presumed to be the provision of a
service within the meaning of Part 3 of the DDA. Therefore,
care is needed to ensure that consultation web-pages are
genuinely accessible. (For more information visit www.disability.gov.uk.)
As a matter of good practice, consideration should also
be given to other alternative formats which may assist
disabled people when carrying out consultation exercises.
These include Braille, large print and audio tape versions
of document.
- While it may be impractical for all departments to have
a fully accessible consultation process, warnings, (e.g.
sign-posting of potential difficulties), or potential
alternative methods of reply for certain groups of respondents,
should help to enable greater involvement.
|
|
Introduction
Template