‘‘ T
Poverty
After housing costs, the proportion of working age disabled people living in poverty is 27 per cent, compared to 19 per cent of working age non-disabled people.
Digital can be very empowering for disabled people. However, there are socioeconomic inequalities to consider. Over the last three years, the Ada Lovelace Institute, in partnership with the Health Foundation, has explored how the accelerated adoption of data-driven systems and digital health services interact with health inequalities in the UK. In the report Access Denied? (www.
adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/healthcare-access- denied), the authors seek to understand how people who have lived experience of poverty and ongoing health concerns
October-November 2023
Digital can be very empowering for disabled people. However, there are socioeconomic inequalities to consider.
Disability Network The P* word (*poverty)
HE fewer barriers we put in the way of disabled staff and library end users, the better the library experience becomes for
all, as disabled people continue to face struggles that we may not be aware of. For example, the average disabled household faces £975 a month in extra costs (Scope – The disability price tag 2023
www.scope.
org.uk/campaigns/extra-costs/disability-price- tag-2023/).
The employment rate of disabled people is 53 per cent, compared to 82 per cent of non-disabled people, with disabled people being almost twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people, and three times as likely to be economically inactive (
www.scope.org.uk/media/disability- facts-figures).
The disability employment gap in the UK is 29 per cent, this figure differs across the different UK countries, for example in Scotland it stands at 31 per cent. The disability employment gap measures the difference between the employment rate of disabled people, compared to that of non-disabled people. (
https://bit.ly/3FbxGVm and https://bit. ly/3Qb9Zmn).
are impacted by health inequalities when interacting with patient-facing digital health services.
In our diverse libraries we may see end users in this situation or be library workers who fit this description. Access denied? also references the data divide (
www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/ the-data-divide), which found that barriers to digital access were more likely to be experienced by the most clinically vulnerable people and those on the lowest household incomes. NHS England’s report Inclusive digital healthcare: a framework for NHS action on digital inclusion (https://bit. ly/48JG0t9) acknowledges that disabled people and people with life-impacting conditions are amongst the groups that generally face a higher risk of health inequalities.
As our post-Covid society continues to hurtle towards digital first can we be sure that we are not creating inequalities for disabled people across the country by assuming that digital first works for everyone?
The Access denied? study findings include:
l Digital health services are being designed and implemented without consideration of lived experience for some groups, particularly for those who are ‘digitally excluded’;
l Health data isn’t working well for some groups experiencing socioeconomic disadvantages.
NHS England’s report Inclusive digital healthcare: a framework for NHS action on digital inclusion highlights that:
l Around seven per cent of households still do not have home internet access;
l Around one million people cancelled their broadband package in the last 12 months due to rising costs;
l Around 10 million adults are estimated to lack foundation-level digital skills.
INSIGHT
Morag Clarkson and Catherine McLaren are Co-Chairs of the CILIP Disability Network.
A key issue around inequalities in digital health services is data poverty and NESTA has done work looking at Data Poverty in Scotland and Wales. The report highlights the importance of public Wi-Fi access and the challenges when this isn’t available.
I think the learning to take away
is the need to continuously appraise the unintended consequences of developments for the disabled community. Some useful reading about supporting disabled colleagues, end users or yourself can be found at
https://abilitynet.org.uk/about,
https://abilitynet.org.uk/accessibility-services/useful- resources, and
https://bit.ly/3FbNbg8. We are delighted to welcome back Catherine McLaren as co-Chair of the CILIP Disability Network following her six-month sabbatical. We are very grateful to Carol Smith for stepping up to cover this role.
As ever we are keen to hear about your
lived experiences. Please email us at info.
disability@cilip.org.uk. IP
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 37
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