Disabled People

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I congratulate my noble friend on raising this topic. It has been a long time since we had a debate that looked at disability in the round. I also congratulate the House because we have not turned it into a competition of suffering between various forms of disability, saying, “Oh, my problems are so much worse”, or complaining about, “The intensity here, the numbers there”, and so on. That can happen, and we have all been pulled into it on various occasions.

One thing that comes out is that we have travelled a long way, but we have done it in a very messy way. What we do in Parliament is have a nice, big, sexy debate about legislation, then we put down the regulation, the politicians forget about the regulation and it is done badly. What tends to happen is that you have gaps between intention and implementation. Then we get dragged back to it when something goes wrong.

What this often leads to is that we have a right that is not fulfilled because people are not trained or are not informed about the possibilities, and then we have a degree of conflict and missed opportunity. I suggest that, in the case of disability, we have a way out, which is becoming apparent and will, if we choose it, deal with some of these problems. It is in the form of assistive technology. It is now time for me to declare my interests. I am dyslexic, I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and I am chairman of Microlink, which is probably the biggest company in Europe dealing with assistive technology and puts packages together to help people.

What I have found in my use of technology is that, 20 years after I first talked to a computer and it produced a text, people are still surprised by it. I am further appalled that the people installing the standard operating systems on all the computers we are given in this House do not know that quite an impressive set of assistive technology is built into them. I know because I have just had this conversation with them. They are not alone. I have further discovered that the House of Commons DWP Committee has just had a nice big report come out looking into exactly the same thing and stating exactly the same thing. We are not using what is there because half the people do not know it is available.

The waste of human potential and everything that goes on incumbent in that is ridiculous. People do not know that, with a little training, you have a little button or app that you can tap into on a computer that will do things such as read text back to you, allow voice input, allow coloured screens and allow good screen readers. Indeed, some people actually challenged the technology that those who are partially sighted use, or so I was told today when talking to an expert in the field. I am afraid that one goes to the Mac, but let us not mess about with it.

You have these things that people do not understand. The main skills required in modern jobs are often those where you have to communicate through a computer and do your job through it. Ways for other groups to get into and at that information and transport it through are available. What are the Government doing to make sure that everybody knows it is there? What are they doing in education that might suggest that the best way to communicate a text in answer will not always be with a pen and paper?

It is one of the absurdities of our world that when senior civil servants have to take exams they have to be taught how to write with a pen and paper again to take the exam. What becomes normal in, and beneficial to, the whole of society would become beneficial to large numbers of the disabled community. It is taking that cultural step of what is readily and easily available and making it work and go through.

My work with Microlink has taught me one other thing: when it comes to supporting people with disabilities in the workplace, the first thing not to do is make a line manager in any organisation who has a budget for something else allocate some of that for disability. That is according to all our biggest clients, including Lloyds and Barclays. You put it in a central place, take it out and get the support. That way, the person gets the help they need. In commercial activity, this cuts down on job vacancies and people leaving. Unless the Government can take this example and make easily available what is readily available, they will not get the benefit out of this.

I hope we will look at this in the round. If we do not, we will waste huge amounts of resources when we have the resource readily available.