Improving the accessibility of DWP written communications

Organisations run by people with learning difficulties or people with mental health support needs gave feedback on improving the accessibility of DWP written communications.

Organisations run by people with learning difficulties or people with mental health support needs gave feedback on improving the accessibility of DWP written communications. Their recommendations included:

General Points

  • Disabled people have a right to accessible information as ‘Article 9 – Accessibility’, of the UN Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) says that:

“States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others,..to information and communication.….”[1]

  • Under Article 4 of the UNCRPD states parties must ‘promote the availability and use of new technologies, including information and communications technologies’,…[2]
  • Professor Harrington’s first review of the Work Capability Assessment in 2010 recommended clear communications from the DWP:

“The review recommends that written communications to the claimant are comprehensively reviewed so that they are clearer, less threatening, contain less jargon and fully explain the process.”[3]

This should have been implemented much sooner.

  • It would be helpful if Plain English is used in all DWP letters.
  • It CANNOT be assumed that Disabled people have support to access communications such as letters and emails of to understand and remember information from phone calls. Communications strategies need to take this into account.
  • Individual access needs can be very different, for example for some people with learning difficulties will find follow up phone calls to check the letter has been received and understood before an appointment would be very helpful but for some people with mental health support needs including paranoia this could be extremely distressing. The key is to record and flag individual access preferences.

As a standard for all written communications a sans serif font such as Arial should be used.

For people with learning difficulties the font needs to be minimum size 18 point.  Other impairments may need a different size font e.g. 14 point, but individual needs to differ so an individual’s preference needs to be flagged and noted and acted on.

Underlining should not be used – use bold instead.

Download our full feedback: 

Feedback to DWP – Improving Accessibility of DWP Written Communications

 

[1] http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=269

[2] http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=264

[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/work-capability-assessment-independent-review-year-1

Related articles