NHS: Hearing Impairment and Visual Impairment
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which recommendations of the Government’s British Sign Language Advisory Board he will implement to ensure the NHS is accessible to deaf and blind people.
Answered by Dr Zubir Ahmed
Under the Equality Act 2010, health and care organisations have a legal duty to make changes in their approach and provision to ensure that services are as accessible to disabled people as they are for everybody else.
All National Health Service organisations and publicly funded social care providers are expected to meet the Accessible Information Standard, which details the recommended approach to supporting the information and communication support needs of people with a disability, impairment or sensory loss, including Deaf and blind people.
We welcome the British Sign Language Advisory Board’s report, Locked out: Exclusion of deaf and deafblind BSL users from health and social care in the UK. We will carefully consider its recommendations, including how, in the context of our work on the 10-Year Health Plan and reform of adult social care, we can improve the experiences of Deaf and blind people when accessing health and care services.
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