RNIB and Thomas Pocklington Trust

Response to Work and Pensions Select Committee into Assistive Technology

About us

RNIB

RNIB is the largest organisation of blind and partially sighted people in the UK and welcome this opportunity to respond to the consultation.

With blind and partially sighted people at the heart of everything we do, our community of over 30,000 people brings together anyone affected by sight loss. More than three quarters of our Board of Trustees are blind or partially sighted. We support, empower and involve thousands of people affected by sight loss to improve lives and challenge inequalities. We engage with a wide range of politicians, organisations and professionals to achieve full inclusion through improvements to services, incomes, rights and opportunities.

We campaign for the rights of blind and partially sighted people in each of the UK’s countries. Our priorities are to:

Be there for people losing their sight.
Support independent living for blind and partially sighted people.
Create a society that is inclusive of blind and partially sighted people's interests and needs.
Stop people losing their sight unnecessarily.

We provide expert knowledge to business and the public sector through consultancy on improving the accessibility of information, the built environment, technology, products and services.

Thomas Pocklington Trust

Thomas Pocklington Trustis a registered charity which offers people who are blind or partially sighted support they require to lead an independent life. We are committed to increasing awareness and understanding of the needs of people with sight loss and to developing and implementing services which meet their needs.

RNIB and Thomas Pocklington Trust are pleased to be able to respond to this call for evidence.

What role can assistive technology play in removing barriers to work and helping disabled people stay in work?

Assistive technology plays a significant role in removing barriers faced by people with sight loss both in getting into and staying in work.

Assistive technology that can help blind and partially sighted people get into and stay in work includes:
Magnification and screen reader software such as Zoomtext and JAWS which enable blind and partially sighted people to access mainstream software packages such as Microsoft Office.
Voice interaction on mobile devices including smart phones and tablets, and devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Assistive technology can give blind and partially sighted people the confidence to know they can access information to help them both secure a job and to work effectively once they are in the role. It can help level the playing field by enabling them to undertake day-to-day tasks and put them on a par with their sighted counterparts.

Here is just one example of how assistive technology can help an employee with sight loss. Natasha, who is in employment, says:

“Accessible technology has changed not just my personal life but my professional one as well. When I first got a mobile phone aged 11, I had to get my mum to read my texts. Who would have thought 15 years later I would be using a fully accessible touch screen phone? Not only can I text, but I am on a level playing field with my sighted peers with access to the same information and technology out of the box with no additional hefty price tag. In work I am a Jaws user, which is a screen reader and, without this, I would just be another statistic: an unemployed disabled person not contributing to the world. With this technology, I have been able to gain an education, start and grow a business and finally fulfil my ambitions of joining the workforce. I hope you can comprehend how huge a difference being included in technological advancement has changed lives, it's so simple to overlook in a sighted world and take for granted pressing that on button that it will just work. Now more and more blind people are being afforded the same luxury.”

For blind and partially sighted people seeking employment, the use of magnification and screen readers enables them to search and apply for jobs independently, and prepare for and undertake interview processes including any assessments. However, this largely depends on the company’s recruitment process being accessible with the software the applicant is using. RNIB and Thomas Pocklington Trust have received a number of complaints from blind and partially sighted people who have found recruitment websites and recruitment processes to be inaccessible.

Recent developments in navigation apps on smart phones enable blind and partially sighted people to overcome a key barrier to accessing work – travelling to and from work. It can help people to travel independently in unfamiliar surroundings with more confidence.

For those who experience sight loss while in employment, assistive technology enables them to access information in a different way now that their sight has deteriorated. Being aware of the range of assistive technology that exists and understanding how exactly it will help them to complete tasks results in higher retention rates in employment and greatly reduces stress for blind and partially sighted employees.

Ifemployers of people with sight loss are aware of the assistive technology that is available to enable blind and partially sighted employees to carry out their roles, they become more open to the idea of both recruiting and retaining people with sight loss. Investing in assistive technology for staff is a very cost effective way of retaining good employees as opposed to the cost of losing valued members of staff and having to re-recruit.

However, despite the advances in assistive technology over the last 15 years, we have not seen any increase in employment rates among blind and partially sighted people which currently stands at only 26% (My Voice, RNIB, 2015).

How should the Government support the development of this technology, and are there any particular innovations it should look to support?

The Government should ensure that staff delivering the new Work and Health programme offer impairment-specific personalised support. That would include being trained in and understanding the range of assistive technologies that can help blind and partially sighted people to get work so that they can offer meaningful support to jobseekers.

Assistive technology can be very expensive and often unaffordable for those currently not in work. The Government should look to increase access to assistive technology in job centre plus offices and public libraries, and train staff to be able to support blind and partially sighted people to use them.

Many blind and partially sighted people and employers are not aware of the various types of assistive technology available. The government should develop an awareness campaign promoting to employers and blind and partially sighted people the range of assistive technologies available and how they can remove many potential barriers to work. This campaign should also address employer attitudes towards sight loss in general and their misunderstanding of the capabilities of blind and partially sighted employees, which are often a significant barrier to employment.

A major barrier faced by blind and partially sighted people seeking work is inaccessible recruitment processes. The Government should play a more active part in ensuring employers make their recruitment processes work fully with screen readers and magnification software. One way in which this can be done is through the Disability Confident scheme. The Government should also ensure that recruitment agencies and recruitment websites must provide accessible processes for blind and partially sighted people.

Another barrier is inaccessible websites, which can make it difficult for blind and partially sighted people when undertaking research about an organisation as part of the job application process or when trying to access information on a particular subject as part of a paid job. The EU web accessibility directive comes into force in the UK in September requiring all public authorities’ websites to be accessible and the Government should ensure that this is enforced robustly and widened to incorporate private businesses.

The Government should also ensure that they enforce procurement guidelines requiring companies to ensure their processes are accessible for blind and partiallys sighted employees.

The Government should ensure that accessibility is an integral element of any new technology that is introduced rather than an expensive add-on.

Innovations that the Government should look to support include:

Voice interaction on mobile devices

Devices such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, when used in the workplace can mean access to instant information from across the web, without a visual interface. It could level the playing field for blind and partially sighted people to enter the workplace on the same footing as their sighted counterparts. The Government could support employers to embrace and connect more everyday work devices with voice interaction.

Stacey, who is in full-time employment, explains:

“As someone with no useful vision, I exist through my ears when it comes to accessing the content I need. Whether it’s replying to work emails, booking calendar appointments, sending a Tweet, finding a route, whizzing round my favourite spreadsheet or booking the next big show in the West End, I do all of this through text-to-speech software. Having equal access to everything, through speech, alongside my peers, allows me to be fully independent and completely free and able to make my own life choices, in education, work, or at home.”

ARkit

ARkit is a new development framework that allows you to easily create augmented reality experiences for iPhone and iPad. With ARKit, the iPhone and iPad can analyse a scene presented by the camera view and effectively display real time information such as; face detection, face tracking, landmarks, text detection, rectangle detection, barcode detection, object tracking, and image registration.This could enablea person with limited or no vision to walk into any office building and find their way around unaided, identifying colleagues, teams, even how many pens are in the stationary pot as they walk by.

Artificial intelligence and computer vision

Microsoft’s Seeing AI aims to help people with low vision by using artificial intelligence. The app, now available as a free download,allows users to hold their phone’s camera up to people, products and more to get audio descriptions of what’s around them. Through a built-in OCR, the app can identify text, barcodes on products and currency, and has multiple applications in the workplace.

Wearable technology

There are some wearables which can have huge benefits for blind and partially sighted people:

ORCAM

Orcam, which can fit on glasses frames, detects and reads text, and identifies products, faces and money notes. It can turn any text into speech with the click of a button and uses artificial intelligence to recognise people’s faces.

AIRA

Aira, a San Diego startup, connects Google's smart glasses to an online human guide who sees what the person wearing the glasses sees and directs them as needed.Currently only available in the US, but soon to make its way across to Europe, this application and smart glasses link the user /wearer to a trained guide or adviser via a camera and earpiece. Although the pricing is still quite costly ($90per month is the basic package), theycouldmake a big difference to blind and partially sighted people’s everyday life. This could be supported by Government as a personal assistant or guide through the Access to Work scheme.

Coding / Computing

Being able to talk to and understand the language of computers will take on increasing importance. Computing is now part of the national curriculum and there are a number of initiatives, both in and out of schools, focusing on teaching the younger generation to programme. This will be prevalent in future generations of employees, andwill need to be accessible to ensure that blind and partially sighted people can play an active part in this. The Governmentcould introduce initiatives and work with employers to support blind and partially sighted people to keep up with and learn these skills.

Is Access to Work the most effective means of providing access to assistive technology? Should other funding models be considered?

Access to Work is the most effective means of providing access to assistive technology. It would be preferable to build on this funding model, rather than introduce others. If there were more than one source of funding, it is very likely that there would be confusion as to “who pays?” and the disabled person may fall through the middle.

Harry, who is full-time employed and lives in London, describes how Access to Work provides him with vital assistive technology to enable him to carry out his role:

“As someone living with a degenerative sight condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, I am entirely dependent on assistive technology in order to engage successfully both at work and at home. Without such technology, I would quite simply not be able to function properly.

My office laptop has both a screen reader programme called JAWS and a screen magnification package called Zoomtext, allowing me to access the same Microsoft computer programmes as my colleagues - Word, Excel and Outlook to name but a few. With this software installed on my laptop, I am also able to attend meetings away from my desk, take notes and operate in a professional manner.

Until a couple of years ago, I also had a CCTV magnifier that would enlarge any printed or handwritten matter that crossed my desk to a size I could cope with but as my condition has got worse I have had to switch to a "Read-It" that takes an image of the page and then converts this into speech so I can listen to it rather than read it with my declining sight.

All the above items are expensive but are provided under Access to Work which so many employers have never even heard of. As someone who is fortunate to be in meaningful paid employment, I am able to afford to purchase similar equipment for use at home too where the subject matter may be different but the need to be part of the 21st Century is not.”

However, if Access to Work is to play that role, it must be improved and problems with assessments and timescales must be addressed. Many people have told RNIB and Thomas Pocklington Trust about their experiences of long delays in the process.

RNIB has already provided the DWP with a list of recommendations for improving Access to Work for blind and partially sighted people. They include:
the end-to-end process of application, assessment and design and implementation of a support package should be speeded up
funding must keep pace with demand and technological development
Assessments for Access to Work should be timely, holistic, and conducted by assessors with appropriate specialist knowledge and training
Processes and procedures for applying for Access to Work should be clear and well-publicised
Access to Work should be extended to cover volunteering, which is often an excellent bridge into paid employment.
The role of Access to Work in supporting self-employment should be revisited, to see if the right balance has been achieved between opening up opportunities and realistic assessment of a business’s prospects.