Home > Public Services
What are Public Services?
Any organisation offering shared computers to the public (many users for each computer) is one that we define as a public service. There’s a huge variety from community and learning centres, to libraries, rehabilitation units and nursing homes.
Public Services and the Law
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) makes it illegal to unreasonably discriminate against existing and potential service users on the basis of their ‘disability’. To stay within the law providers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’.
The definition of disability is very broad and includes people with physical, sensory and reading and writing difficulties.
Complying with the DDA offers more inclusive services
Staff in public services are not usually computer specialists, so AbilityNet offers a range of training and support to help you comply with the DDA and offer a better service to your computer users.
Computers can be adjusted very easily for free and the cost of adaptive software and hardware is often low cost. So ‘reasonable adjustments’ are affordable when your staff have a little knowledge.
Our clients include:
- adult community education
- day and residential care centres
- individual health professionals
- libraries
- learning centres
- learndirect, UK Online
- work based learning centres
- local authority facilities
- museums
- voluntary sector organisations
AbilityNet services
All our services are designed to ensure users with health conditions and disabilities (many of which they will see as minor problems or be reluctant to reveal) enjoy using their computer rather than see it as something too difficult to master – because they can’t read the screen easily or find controlling the mouse difficult.
We wish to support users and staff to make public access to computers something that everyone can enjoy. Our services include:
- staff training and support
- user assessment services
- supply of assistive technology kits (equipment, training and ongoing support as one package)
- technology updates
- information on free resources
- hardware and software solutions
- disability awareness and latest updates on the DDA
Training to make the most of your centre’s assistive technologies (AT)
Enabling Computer Access for Disabled Learners
a menu of training modules that can be combined to suit you. It can be tailored to reflect
- the level of staff experience and knowledge
- your typical user group
- ‘hands on’ sessions for tutors and technical staff
- more general disability and DDA awareness session for front line staff
If you have a wide range of users, combine staff training with core assistive technologies and support in their use.
To reduce the risk of buying the wrong technology, or investing in expensive kit unnecessarily, AbilityNet have a range of Accessibility Kits for adult learning centres. Each kit combines hardware, software, staff training and resources. AbilityNet has supplied kits to hundreds of public service organisations over the past three years, and their impact has been independently evaluated very positively.
Latest News
- Join the network of over 65 organisations in Scotland supported by AbilityNet
- We are looking for partners in London now
Work with AbilityNet to provide better support for your disabled clients – we have funding to support internet enabled IT assessments and assistive technology and training. Contact Pamela Hardaker for more details.
- Calling all Health professionals
AbilityNet are preferred suppliers to the Health Sector Skills Council, offering a range of courses to help you better support disabled people at home.
- Is your local council one of the 10 winners of the Digital Challenge?
10 local councils will be researching and developing new inclusive digital services in the next few months. Your council could be one of them.