Deafblindness: Emerging Technologies

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

As the noble Lord rightly points out, identifying the appropriate technologies by scanning the horizon for those that will be of most impact and use is, and must be, a cross-governmental matter. I take every opportunity to urge my fellow Ministers to fight the good fight in this respect. DSIT’s role is as the provider and exemplar of technology use to all of government and the public sector, and indeed all of the UK, but all government departments recognise their responsibility to continuously identify ways to use technology and to make technology in the United Kingdom as accessible as it can possibly be.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I support the points that the noble Baroness made and note the staggering figure of 450,000. Would it be possible for the Minister to extend the review to include work undertaken at universities? There may well be scope for co-ordinating that work to help not only them and deafblind people but those in the commercial sector who are looking for new ideas.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

DSIT works extensively across universities on this and other programmes. In addition, the Government commission a range of research, particularly in the area of deafblindness, not least, for instance, into the procurement of hearing aids by the NHS.