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, making it easy to understand for people with learning disabilities and low literacy.
The Disability Discrimination Act
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 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 (or make it easier for) disabled people to make use of its services.
The Act now requires public bodies to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people. It also allows the government to set minimum standards so that disabled people can use public transport easily.
Valuing People
"Valuing People 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 Support Team 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 need to take the need for accessible information onboard. Without this, people are dependent on the support and interpretation of others and real inclusion, choice and independence cannot happen for many people.
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, any guidelines for using your service, complaints procedure, tenancy agreement and other documents accessible.
Working with Words can help you reach this audience. We make your information easy to understand for people with learning disabilities and low literacy. - 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 disabilities. 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 a list of our customers
- See comments from customers
- Find out more about some of our work making information accessible
