PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Ministry of Justice: Public Consultation (7 January 2022)

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 6 January 2022 to Question 94497, whether the Government plans to ensure large font and easy read formats are available immediately and not only upon request; how many large print versions have been requested; how long does it take to process these requests; and whether there are other methods of accessibility available.

Asked by:
Anna McMorrin (Labour)

The Government's Service Standard (https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard) guides government teams as to how they should design and produce content providing information regarding public services. Departments are required to make sure that all information is accessible across all channels, including online, phone, paper and face to face.

For all consultations, the department gives due consideration to the needs of the audience group and we take whatever action we can to improve reach and accessibility, including by following best practice through provision of accessible formats for consultation documents.

For the Victims Bill consultation, a large print version of the consultation document was available from publication on request; we also distributed it to key partners in the Victims sector in December. A British Sign Language version has also been developed and will be available shortly. A HTML version has gone live this week.

The number of large print versions requested for all published documents is not held centrally.

The standard accessible consultation format that Ministry of Justice uses for publications online is an ‘accessible PDF’. Accessible PDFs are readable by people using screen readers. This is made available alongside the online version on our consultation hub which meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines V2.1 AA standard.

Answered by:
James Cartlidge (Conservative)
18 January 2022