Ensuring disabled people get vital health information in a format they can access

Whether the Department of Health & Social Care made reasonable adjustments for a disabled person and also whether they are complying with their Public Sector Equality Duty requirements. By not providing information in an accessible format to people who were clinically extremely vulnerable so they could protect themselves in a pandemic the Department may have also breached human rights obligations.

Sarah Leadbetter is registered blind and categorised as clinically extremely vulnerable. However, she has not been sent any correspondence about shielding in a format that she can access and she only discovered that she is on the Shielded Patients List because her disabled mother is also shielding and therefore received the same letter.

Sarah brought a legal challenge against the Department for Health & Social Care because they had not made reasonable adjustments in response to her disability.

This is a serious or systemic breach of equality law and human rights law and intervening in the case enabled us to ensure it was effectively challenged.

Sarah had engaged Leigh Day to begin judicial review proceedings against the Department for Health and Social Care for their failure to provide accessible information. We then applied to intervene in the proceedings to support Sarah's claim that the Department was in breach of its duties under the Equality Act 2010, did not comply with the Accessible Information Standard and discriminated against Sarah under Articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Following our intervention and shortly before the expedited hearing date the Department for Health and Social Care agreed to change its practices. It has now agreed:

• To reconsider its practice of sending out hardcopy letters to people on the Shielded Patients List without first finding out how they would like to receive information.
• To consider how information on shielding can be given in an accessible format to disabled people and/or people with communication needs who are on the Shielded Patients List.
• To investigate technical issues in identifying communication needs of people on the Shielded Patients List, and to work out how to address shortcomings in the information held in the Personal Demographics Service about communication needs.
• To make improvements in how people’s communication needs are recorded in GP records.

This work will be completed within three months.

As improvements are now being made judicial review proceedings were withdrawn.

Disabled people who need to receive vital health information in a different format for them to be able to access it will benefit from this.