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W3C-validated transitional XHTML 3.10 Involving people: Making sure IP is accessible to everyone
It is essential to provide information in different formats,
to make sure you are meeting the wide variety of users' and carers'
needs.
It is a basic aim of IP to ensure that better, personalised information is made available to everyone, including people who face disadvantages. All of the pilot sites sought to design their IP systems and the prescriptions themselves to meet the needs of disadvantaged users. The sites focused, in particular, on the following types of disadvantage. We'll look at these in turn, on a separate page for each. We have included summaries of what the pilots learned, and case studies which provide valuable illustrations.
- General disadvantages
- Disabled users, and particularly those with visual and hearing impairments and learning disabilities
- Users with low self-advocacy skills, especially where this is associated with low take-up of mainstream services
- Users with low literacy levels and who have difficulty understanding written materials
- Users who suffer mental ill health
- Black and minority ethnic communities and those without English as a first language
- Older and more immobile users.
- Location: making IPs available at the right places to meet people's needs.
'I wouldn't know how to turn a computer on but people say the Internet is such a great way to find out about things. It's good to know I could get one of these prescriptions and come to the library to find out more. '— service user
On the next page: meeting users' accessibility needs: those with general disadvantages
