Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will bring forward proposals to ensure that the 101 and 111 services are accessible to people who suffer from deafness by facilitating the use of text by means of a registration form such as with the 999 service.

It is important that deaf people have the same access to the NHS111 service as people with hearing.

There is a feature that allows deaf callers to register their phones and then report incidents to 999 in text form. Although this works for ambulance dispatch, it does not lend itself to a full telephone triage.

The NHS111 service was made available to deaf people via the Text Relay Service when NHS111 was established, with BT Next Generation Text commencing around November 2015.

Access to NHS111 has been further improved by the NHS111 British Sign Language (BSL) service, which uses video relay technology to connect patients to interpreters using a web-based client or via the ‘InterpreterNow’ app. The interpreter then makes a conventional phone call into NHS111 and acts as an intermediary between the patient and the NHS111 call handler. Deaf people can access the NHS111 BSL service using a webcam-enabled laptop or computer (via the NHS Choices website at www.nhs.uk/111) or using a smartphone or tablet via the ‘InterpreterNow’ app.