Municipalities and welfare organizations are increasingly informing and supporting citizens digitally and online. People with a disability in particular experience enormous barriers to accessing online services. How can this be better? Professionals and experts share their experiences, good practice examples and tips. In this article we talk to Claartje Sadée, policy advisor at Elke(in).
‘First some figures: 1 in 6 people experience limitations with the digital services provided by the government. This concerns, for example, people with a visual, auditory or mild intellectual disability, people with a psychological vulnerability and people with lower language skills. That is a large group of people. Many of these people are digitally skilled. But if a website does not meet the legal accessibility criteria and is not user-friendly and understandable, many of them will not be able to use it.
Impact
The impact of this is great. “People with a disability have lifelong and lifewide.” Life-wide means that someone with a disability has support questions in different areas. For example, in the field of mobility, in the field of work or student finance, in the field of care, etc..” Applications must be made on all these fronts. It has been calculated that people with a disability spend much more time arranging their daily lives than people without a disability. This is partly because information is not easy to find or understand and because forms are not accessible, so you cannot fill them in if, for example, you have a limited hand function or are visually impaired.
Lifelong refers to your disability; you have them all your life, for example if you have a mild intellectual disability. But you have to reapply for the Wmo every year. So you have to prove again every year that you have a disability. That is unnecessary and unnecessarily increases the regulatory burden.’
Organize your affairs independently
People are regularly turned away from the municipality when they ask for support by telephone, says Sadée. “A visually impaired person told me she was trying to book an appointment online. She had already spent a lot of time filling out the appointment form. When that failed and she then called to make an appointment by phone, she was told “You can only make an appointment via the website”. Then she had to ask someone close to her for help. And that help is not always immediately available.’
Sadée: ‘The UN Convention on Handicap states that people with disabilities must be enabled to fully participate in society and to manage their affairs independently. The condition is that the digital services of public organizations such as the government are accessible, user-friendly and understandable.’ In addition, it must be possible to arrange your affairs in non-digital ways, for example by telephone.
Involving experts by experience
Involve the people involved, experts by experience, in improving your services! Experts by experience are indispensable in the awareness-raising process in an organisation. If someone with a visual impairment uses a screen reader to show what they encounter when a website is not accessible, the penny often falls on the other side. Experienced experts can tell you what they need and can help you test your service for user-friendliness and comprehensibility. A local disability platform, an accessibility working group or the social domain advisory council may be able to help you find experts by experience.
Incidentally, the UN treaty also requires municipalities to draw up a local inclusion agenda. And digital accessibility must also be anchored in this.
