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<p>National Health Service organisations and publicly funded social care providers
must comply with the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) to meet the communication
needs of patients and carers with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss. NHS England
has completed a review of the AIS to help ensure that everyone’s communication needs
are met in health and care provision. The review considered the effectiveness of the
current AIS, how the standard is implemented and enforced in practice, and identified
recommendations for improvement. The revised standard will be published in due course.</p><p>Following
publication of the revised standard, NHS England will continue work to support implementation
with awareness raising, communication and engagement and updated e-learning modules
on the AIS to ensure NHS staff are better aware of the standard and their roles and
responsibilities in implementing it.</p><p>These actions should support better and
more consistent implementation of the standard.</p><p>In addition to the AIS, following
Royal Assent of the British Sign Language Act 2022, the Government Communication Service
will promote and facilitate the use of British Sign Language (BSL) in communications
with the public. This is expected to support BSL users to access public services,
including health and care services. Our work to promote BSL builds on a longstanding
departmental commitment to ensuring our content is accessible for disabled audiences.
Our GOV.UK and social media content closely follows guidance from the Government Digital
Service. All videos are captioned for those who are hard of hearing, graphics have
accessible texts and colours for those with reading difficulties and have voiceover
descriptions for the partially sighted.</p>
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