Meeting the Accessible Information Standard

All providers of NHS care or other publicly-funded adult social care must meet the Accessible Information Standard (AIS).

The AIS applies to people who use a service and have information or communication needs because of a:

• disability
• impairment
• sensory loss

The AIS covers the needs of people who are deaf/Deaf, blind, or deafblind, or who have a learning disability. This includes interpretation or translation for people whose first language is British Sign Language. It does not cover these needs for other languages.

It should also be used to support any other disabled person who has information and communication needs. For example, people who:

• have aphasia or cerebral palsy
• are blind or partially sighted
• are autistic
• have a learning disability
• have a mental health condition which affects their ability to communicate.

When appropriate, AIS also applies to their carers and parents.

You must meet the AIS for anyone who is publicly funded and who uses your services. This applies to all:

• adult social care services
• hospitals
• GP practices
• dentists
• other services

unless no one using the service is publicly funded.

Websites are not covered by AIS.

Services which do not need to follow AIS:

• must still make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010
• may wish to use a similar approach when identifying and meeting people’s information needs

Five steps of AIS

Identify

How do you:

• assess for disability related information or communication needs?
• find out if people have any of these needs?
• plan how it will meet those needs?

Record

How do you record those identified needs clearly?

What systems are in place as part of the assessment and care planning process?

Flag

How do you highlight or flag people’s information and communication needs in their records?

This could be in paper or electronic records. The chosen method must make it possible for all staff to quickly and easily be aware of (and work to meet) those needs.

Share

Sometimes you need to share details of people’s information and communication needs with other health and social care services. This means that other services can also respond to the person's information and communication needs.

How do you do this (when you have consent to do so)?

Meet

How do you:

• make sure it meets people’s needs?
• make sure that people receive information which they can access and understand?
• arrange communication support if people need it?

For example, patients and people using a service should:

• be able to contact (and be contacted by) services in accessible ways, such as via email, text message or Text Relay
• receive information and correspondence in formats they can read and understand. This could be, for example, in audio, braille, easy read or large print
• be supported by a communication professional at appointments if needed to support conversation. This could be a British Sign Language interpreter
• get support from health and care staff and organisations to communicate. This could include help to lip-read or use a hearing aid

Our assessments

We will consider how well services meet the AIS under the responsive key question, as part of the providing information quality statement:

“We provide appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information in formats that we tailor to individual needs.”

We will focus on whether information and communication is accessible by talking to people using the service and to staff. We will also consider any information that we already have, for example from people using the service who have contacted us to feedback about their care.

Wherever possible, when assessing this quality statement we will review the assessment and care plan of at least one person using the service who should have their information and communication needs supported by AIS.

Adult social care services also need to complete an annual provider information return. We will ask how you are meeting AIS as part of this return.