Freedom of Information (FOI) requests undertaken by SoftwareONE, a leading global provider of end-to-end software and cloud technology solutions, have found almost three quarters (72%) of all English councils are planning to invest in making their IT systems more accessible over the next 12 months. Almost all councils (95%) have at least one disabled employee and all respondents said they have assistive technologies in place. However, assistance is mostly on case-by-case basis, with only 38% of councils having an official digital inclusion and accessibility strategy for employees. Further investment in 2020 will address this lack of strategy, enabling councils to empower all employees to confidently carry out their job role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A total of 60% of councils said they experienced technology challenges when trying to make IT systems more accessible for employees. While the majority are providing assistive technologies despite these challenges \u2013 offering tools such as screen magnifiers (92%), dictation (77%) or speech recognition (90%) \u2013 councils may be missing out on a simpler way of improving digital inclusion. Many widely deployed solutions, such as Microsoft 365, have accessibility features such as Soundscape or Translator already built-in. This represents a real opportunity for technical consolidation and cost savings for councils, as well as improved user experience, which is currently being overlooked due to lack of awareness of the tools on offer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNeurodivergent and disabled\nemployees bring a range of skills, insights and different ways of thinking to\norganisations. However, they may require extra assistive tools to access\nworkplace systems,\u201d said Andy Dunbar, Service Lead, Technology Services at\nSoftwareONE. \u201cThe FOI findings show that, despite heavy budget cuts, councils\nare already making strides to support employees and citizens with accessibility\nneeds. However, investment around digital inclusion should accelerate this\nfurther, with councils proactively addressing accessibility issues that any\ndisabled or neurodivergent employees experience. Achieving this doesn\u2019t mean\ncash-strapped councils have to pay for the latest technologies either \u2013 many\nalready operate modern software suites with extensive accessibility tools\nbuilt-in, which will help drive better outcomes for staff requiring\nadjustments, as well as the wider workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe FOI findings present an encouraging picture for accessibility and digital inclusion, and it\u2019s great to see councils looking to go further by investing more in these areas,\u201d said Adi Latif, Accessibility and Usability Consultant at AbilityNet, a UK charity that helps older and disabled people navigate technology at home, work and education. \u201cLast year\u2019s regulations requiring public sector bodies to make websites or mobile applications more accessible were a real step forward, but there\u2019s always more that can be done. We\u2019re keen to see even more digital inclusion progress in 2020 and will continue to support the drive to expand accessibility in both the public and private sectors.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These findings are the result of an FOI request, submitted to 95 English councils by SoftwareONE in October 2019, and collected in November 2019. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests undertaken by SoftwareONE, a leading global provider of end-to-end software and cloud technology solutions, have found almost three quarters (72%) of all English councils are planning to invest in making their IT systems more accessible over the next 12 months. Almost all councils (95%) have at least one disabled employee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":36301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6617,29,93,23],"tags":[13612],"class_list":["post-36298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-software","category-top-stories","category-united-kingdom","tag-softwareone"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36302,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36298\/revisions\/36302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}