Why accessible information is important
“We can always depend on the team at Working with Words to produce good, accessible and quality pieces of work for us. Your work has done a lot to raise a positive profile of people with learning difficulties.”
Greenwich Outreach Team
There are 1.2 million people with learning disabilities and 1.7 million adults with low literacy in the UK.
We can help you reach this audience by producing accessible information.
The Disability Discrimination Act
- The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) aims to end the discrimination that many disabled people face.
- This Act has been significantly extended, including by the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. It now gives disabled people rights in the areas of: employment, education, access to goods, facilities and services, and buying or renting land or property, including making it easier for disabled people to rent property and for tenants to make disability-related adaptations.
The Act requires:
- employers to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled person put at a substantial disadvantage by a provision, criterion or practice, or a physical feature of premises
- provision of goods, facilities and services: to take reasonable steps to change a practice, policy or procedure which makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services, provide an auxiliary aid or service if it would enable disabled people to make use of its services.
The Act requires public bodies to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people.
It allows the government to set minimum standards so that disabled people can use public transport easily.
Valuing People Now
Valuing People Now is the government's plan for making the lives of people with learning disabilities, their families and carers better.
It is based on people having:
- their rights as citizens
- inclusion in local communities
- choice in daily life
- real chances to be independent"
This is taken from the Valuing People web site:
To make these things a reality, people with learning disabilities need accessible information about their rights, choices and independence. This means that organisations who are offering opportunities in housing, training, education, leisure and transport must take the need for accessible information onboard.
Without this, many people with learning disabilities are dependent on the support and interpretation of others and real inclusion, choice and independence cannot happen.
Valuing People Now, says
"Organisations should make their information more accessible. They have to do this because of the Disability Discrimination Act".
How we can help
Working with Words can help you produce auxiliary aids - information in easy to understand formats - to help you meet the requirements. - We can make your contract of employment, guidelines for using your service, complaints procedure, tenancy agreement and other documents accessible.
- We can help you produce accessible information in different formats: audio CD's and MP3's, web sites, leaflets, posters and booklets.
- At Working with Words we work with people with learning difficulties. We discuss the material with them and develop simplified text and visual ways to understand your information.
- The resulting product will enable people with learning disabilities and low literacy throughout the country to access your services
More information
- Find out more by visiting our what we do page
- See our our customers
- Find out more about our work making information accessible
