Digital Understanding

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for introducing this debate. Before I start, I should draw the House’s attention to some of my interests listed in the register.

There have been two very brief mentions of disability in this debate—by the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Knight—in the context of groups of disabled people not getting access to the internet. However, we have not addressed the fact that there is another problem for these people. Many groups can use adaptations to allow them a degree of access to the net—but, unless companies do to their websites what something like 80% of major firms have done, that technology will be non-accessible. This is the equivalent of insisting, in the built environment, that you have steps in front of everything—it means that some people cannot get in. Currently, there is no understanding of the need for accessibility when these systems are devised, or of how this might be done.

With the expansion of this area, effectively we have totally forgotten something that we have talked about and implemented over many decades in the built and non-digital environment. The problem is that some people cannot access certain functions. From what I have been led to understand, those with visual impairments are probably the worst affected. Dyslexics also have a problem—for them it presents an absolute barrier. I have been studying a group called AchieveAbility and the problems relating to employment for those in the neurodiverse community—dyslexics, dyspraxics, those with autism and dyscalculics. The biggest problem that this group experiences with recruitment is through the big agencies. They insist that you go online—but you cannot fill out the form. The rest of society should be made aware of something this basic. At the moment, nobody knows about it and most of these sins are committed in ignorance. Let us start to look at this issue. If we do not, we will be excluding something like 20% of the population from the benefits of the internet.