Hello,
My name is Angwen. I am a Senior Equality and Diversity Officer working for the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board. I am also undertaking a West Yorkshire Health Equity Fellowship my project looks at ‘Reducing barriers for disabled people in West Yorkshire: developing disability involvement mechanisms in the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and Health and Care Partnerships’.
When I got asked to write this blog I was filled with anxiety, thoughts whirling round my head: - “what could I write about?”, “would anyone be interested?”, and most of all “would people listen and be willing to make positive changes?”.
Alongside my day-to-day job of supporting and advising colleagues on all things equality and diversity related, I also provide expertise and specialist knowledge on accessibility and accessible information. Inclusion and accessibility are extremely important to me on both a professional and personal level.
Inclusion
Inclusion is making sure that everyone feels both included and valued within your society, community, or organisation. When you, or the group, or community that you are part of are excluded, feel left out, ignored, or marginalised this has a significant impact on your life, and in particular your health and wellbeing.
Accessibility
Accessibility is about making sure that everyone, can have equal and fair opportunities to access services and activities. In relation to disability, it means making sure if you are someone living with a disability you are not excluded from participating in society because you are disabled. We need to make sure that disabled people can do what they need to do in a similar amount of time and effort as someone that does not have a disability. For example, this could be making sure there is a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter available at an appointment for a Deaf patient whose first language is BSL or sending an appointment letter in easy read to a patient who uses easy read or making sure the information on your website or intranet is accessibly formatted so that people using assistive software can access it.
Accessibility and inclusion are closely linked and sometimes overlap.
Personal experience
I am a member of the ICB Disability and Long-Term Conditions staff network and the Working Carers staff network. I have both lived experience of disability and I care for loved ones with long term conditions and disabilities.
When I was a very small child I was diagnosed with a permanent visual impairment, I have never known anything different. I understand that how I see the world, access information, undertake work, and take part in life in general is apparently different from the average person without a visual impairment.
At school I remember being excluded from some activities, last to be picked in team sports or games (unless it was a quiz), laughed at and bullied because of my thick rimmed glasses and that I couldn’t participate in some activities like everyone else. My clumsiness, ability to injure myself, and untidy handwriting due to poor vision and poor coordination were not appreciated by the education system, and various PE teachers seemed unable to grasp that it was not unwillingness that meant I couldn’t hit or catch a ball no matter how many times I practiced, just lack of being able to see it!
As I got older, I adapted, and found my own ways to succeed, getting a good education, qualifications etc, but rarely had any offer of support.
There is no way to tell that I have this disability. Like many other people I have what is often known as invisible disability. And for years I didn’t realise that it was, or that I could get support, I just adapted, found my own solutions, and worked longer hours to keep up. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with a new long-term condition and had been referred to Occupational Health, that it was suggested that I might benefit from an Access to Work assessment for my visual impairment as well and I suddenly found that I had access to equipment and IT solutions.
Life in general can be challenging, for example if you move furniture in the office to somewhere I haven’t memorised I will walk into it or fall over it, I have fallen into a train and down the gap between the train and the station platform, fallen down uneven stairs with no handrail at a training session and broke bones, escalators are not to be trusted I have no idea when to jump on or off, likewise with cars I have no idea how fast they are going or how close it is so crossing a road takes hours. I struggle with bright lights, loud noises, crowds, and events with lots of moving people are a nightmare (like a massive obstacle course of moving objects I must not walk into).
I am not sure that we are all aware of the stress and differing challenges disabled colleagues experience just to get to work, or the ones they experience when they are at work. I cannot describe to you eloquently enough the emotional impact of attending an event or meeting knowing you can’t join in, or receiving information you can’t access, being told there is no obligation to meet your access needs, or that you must make it accessible for yourself. The immense impact of assistive equipment failing or being told to use tools or systems where accessibility hasn’t been considered, or when someone doesn’t model the inclusive behaviours and values of your organisation. When this happens, you can end up feeling very alone, isolated, and not valued. Sometimes it can feel like you are constantly being told you don’t belong.
Accessibility training and resources
I lead on the training and resources for the ICB around producing accessible information, we have minimum standards, guidance, and resources. We recently agreed to make the training mandatory for everyone in our organisation, and I am currently developing more resources and updating content. Health and social care partners both from public sector and voluntary sector have been really keen to learn more and share their best practice too. We are exploring the train the trainer approach and accessibility champions to spread the knowledge. I have also worked with different teams and partners to look at how they produce and share information, and other aspects of accessibility. I previously ran training sessions for colleagues from the Clinical Commissioning groups I supported prior to us becoming an ICB, and staff from local health, care and voluntary sector organisations were also able to attend. Our website and intranet have been assessed for accessibility compliance which included user testing from members of our Disability and Long-Term Conditions staff network, and both have accessibility tools that help enable greater access.
Health Equity Fellowship
Working on my Health Equity Fellowship project I am going out into the community hearing the experiences of people with lived experience of disability and the barriers they experience. Some of the insight shared is brilliant, full of best practice we can learn from. Other experiences we clearly need to address as systems, places, and organisations. The project is gathering information to help us understand how we can make our engagement and involvement mechanisms more accessible for people with disabilities or long-term conditions. It’s also identifying lots of patient and service user experience around accessibility and access to services that also need addressing.
Let’s make things more accessible
I think we can all agree that no one should be excluded from using something based on them experiencing a disability or impairment.
If we make our documents and content more accessible, we can reach more people, accessibly formatted content is also more accessible for a wider audience and easier to translate into other languages or formats.
We can all do our part to make our information for our communities and our colleagues more accessible.
- Remember not everyone accesses information in the same way, so for public information have you checked if you need an easy read version, and audio file, a video with subtitles and transcript, or a BSL video?
- Have you got contact information available so that people can ask for an alternative version or format?
- Are you sharing information by social media and if so, are you using accessible hashtags and including text image descriptions and or alt text for people who can’t see the images?
- AVOID using PowerPoint as a form, it is not designed for this purpose and using it actively excludes people using assistive software.
- DO: Use the tools in Microsoft or Google Docs, or other software that check for accessibility. Microsoft has an accessibility checker in Word, PowerPoint and Excel. There is also an Editor tool which will help.
- DO: get advice if you are going to organise an event or large meeting, check if anyone has accessibility needs beforehand, think about the activities can everyone participate or do I need to think of an alternative.
- AVOID sharing posters as image files (pictures). They are not accessible for a wide range of people. They cannot be read by assistive software.
- AVOID using auto generated Alt text on images it is not helpful or accurate!!
- AVOID sharing PowerPoint as a PDF unless you have checked its accessibility, it does not save accessibly and can’t be read by assistive software. You will need to offer an alternative like a word version as well.
- CHECK that apps that say they produce accessible content do really produce accessible content, quite often they do not. Make sure the apps are accessible to use.
- CHECK that software and IT related systems you purchase or procure are usable and accessible for most people, both for public facing and for internal staff use.
- Follow accessibility best practice, the ICB uses our guidance and minimum standards, these help us to make sure we structure our information, are mindful when we use colour, use helpful alt text, accessible hyperlinks, plain language and accessible style, and format accessible tables.
Thank you for reading and have a good weekend,
Angwen
Hello. My name's Amanda McKie and I’m Consultant Nurse for Learning Disabilities at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust.
One example that has stayed with me is a lady who had come in for breast cancer care. I found out that she loves teddy bears, and knowing we had some in A&E, I went and got one, which I gave to her before she went in for surgery. She instantly bonded with it, which helped to keep her calm and able to cope with what was happening. After the op, the surgeon emailed me with their thanks, and said the teddy had made such a difference to the whole experience. They told me that the lady had called the bear Amanda. After the operation, I made a home visit to the family, more to support the lady’s 85year-old mum, who, to be honest, was struggling with the situation much more than her daughter. These are the moments that make this job so rewarding.
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