News > Accessibility and usability

The Patient Rights (Scotland) Act was passed by the Scottish Government in February 2011. The Act created the Patient Advice and Support Service (PASS), an independent service which provides free, accessible and confidential advice and support to patients, their carers and families about NHS healthcare. The Patient Advice and Support Service is provided by the Scottish CAB Service and can be accessed from any Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) in Scotland. The Service provides general advice and help on a range of issues, such as housing, employment, benefits or money worries.

One in three people are now using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for health related issues according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The study, which surveyed more than 1,000 consumers and 124 healthcare executives in the US, showed people are using social media to influence decisions to seek care and to find answers to their medical wants, needs and preferences. The Health Research Institute arm of PWC monitored social media traffic for a week, and found that patients are choosing to obtain medical information from community or patient sites rather than those set up by healthcare organisations.

This booklet from the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) aims to make women and their families aware of the treatment and care they should expect to receive if they have a mood disorder during pregnancy and after the birth of their child. It also aims to help women, their partners and their families to manage their condition by understanding the latest research evidence. The booklet is based on the recommendations from the SIGN national clinical guideline on perinatal mood disorders.

This report is designed to assist the NHS in Wales in delivering high quality and accessible services to people with sensory loss in Wales. The report steering group identified three main areas where services needed to improve, including communication "“ ensuring information (both written and face-to-face) is accessible and delivered in a way that meets the needs of people with sensory loss. Of specific note was the need to improve communication around access to appointments.

Research carried out by the think-tank, 2020Health, has revealed a dramatic increase in the amount spent by NHS Trusts on translation and interpretation services. The report, Lost in Translation, investigates NHS spend on translation services, the overall costs as well as the individual areas of spend. Research was conducted by 2020health through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to 247 NHS Trusts. The report recommendations include translating materials into easy read English rather than other languages, and make these materials available across all sites and creating a central repository of information that has already been translated into other languages so that it is readily available to all NHS sites.

Individuals with impaired vision may have great difficulty in accessing and negotiating healthcare services. In this article in the BMJ, the authors discuss the difficulties that visually impaired patients encounter in the healthcare environment and ways in which problems may be overcome. They make a number of key points and recommendations including that people with visual impairment are likely to have limited access to information and healthcare facilities and that taking time to communicate effectively about access, facilities, diagnosis, and management plans is necessary; communications, in visual or audio format, should be tailored to individuals' needs.

Prodigy has launched a new set of materials on a range of health topics that are particularly relevant to the health of people with learning disabilities. The leaflets which were written with easy words and pictures, make them suitable to give to patients with learning disabilities or indeed anyone who struggles with written information. The information has come from the easyhealth web site, which has a wide range of resources for people with learning disabilities, many produced by NHS Trusts and voluntary organisations.

Diabetes UK, along with the British Heart Foundation, Children's Food Campaign and Which?, has written to Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley calling for clear and easy-to-understand food labels to allow people to tell quickly and easily what's in the food they're buying. The organisations have come together, ahead of an EU vote on 5 July, to urge that UK representatives call strongly for mandatory front-of-pack (FOP) labelling which includes information on energy, fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt.

This week the British Medical Journal reported on the The Healthcare Information for All by 2015 (HIFA2015) conference, held this week in London. The conference, 'Addressing the information needs of healthcare providers in low-income countries', included international speakers presenting on the information needs of developing countries, the exchange and use of health information and global networks.

The British Standards Institution has developed a web accessibility Code of Practice, which is the first British Standard to address the growing challenge of digital inclusion. The new standard is designed to ensure any web product you commission or design is accessible for all. It has been designed to introduce non-technical professionals to improved accessibility, usability and user experience for disabled and older people.