Accessibility strategies are useless if they fail the very people who need them

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Despite asking numerous consultants, charge nurses and ward admission points, not one person knew anything about their own autism accessibility strategy (PA)

Unless accessibility strategies filter down to the people who need them, they are useless.

Having recently received care within the NHS trust (who did an excellent job in terms of providing the necessary acute, emergency care) I saw firsthand how large banners hung across the hospital foyer proudly demonstrated their commitment to accessibility. Furthermore, their website displays a clear statement detailing their autism strategy, accompanied by a dedicated team of staff to deliver specialist autism support to those in need.

However, trying to access the Trust’s support for autistic people was impossible from my position as patient. Despite asking numerous consultants, charge nurses and ward admission points, not one person knew anything about their own autism accessibility strategy. I was left in intolerable, sensory distress, which has created a level of trauma for me that the medical interventions did not.

This is important because research tells us that autistic people are expected to die (on average) 12 years earlier than their non-autistic counterparts. After spending five nights in a general medical ward, I can understand why.

There is no innate part of being autistic that pre-disposes us to an earlier demise. Our lower-than-average life expectancy is due to the additional trauma and stress of not having our autistic needs met. Research shows that heart disease and suicide are the predominant killers of autistic people, conditions we know can be brought on by chronic stress, trauma and adverse life experiences.

Equality laws mitigate, in part, the distress of having to navigate a non-autistic world. Reasonable adjustments are there to ensure places and services are accessible for disabled people.

Unfortunately, there is little point in having an accessibility strategy if it is functionally useless in practice.

Alice Running

Leeds

BBC needs to up its game

Like Judith Daniels, in her recent letter to The Independent, I’ve been avoiding subscriptions to the streaming channels and only coughing up for the BBC licence. However, having been forced to face the gobsmacking facts about celebrity newsreaders’ salaries and the whopping pay cheques demanded by sports pundits I’ve decided to seek other opportunities for my entertainment. Many commercial channels offer content that will involve you having to sit through literally hours of brain-rotting adverts but not all and while I resent every penny,  I’m forced to admit the opportunity to watch something worth seeing without being assailed by meerkat puppets or exhortations to play bingo is worth the monthly ransom.

The BBC needs to up its game and cut its salary bill if it’s going to survive in light of the new channels getting my attention.

Steve Mackinder

Denver

Irony of Brexit

There is a certain irony in the fact that many voted to leave the EU in order that we would take back control of our borders and put a stop to the number of migrants coming to the UK.

Since leaving the EU however, the Dublin agreement no longer applies and we are now unable to send immigrants back to the country they first arrived in. So what we are facing now is a multitude of migrants and asylum seekers arriving that we are ill-equipped to deal with.

Geoff Forward

Stirling

Braverman doesn’t care for rules

In a seemingly desperate attempt to divert attention from her multiple failings as a minister, home secretary Suella Braverman has doubled down on opening of the floating barge Bibby Stockholm. She has also begun a new front against lawyers who help migrants negotiate the UK’s immigration laws by attacking “crooked” lawyers as “criminals and conmen” who “need to be jailed”.

This is the same Braverman who is on her second term as home secretary. She had to resign as home secretary on 19 October 2022 for “multiple breaches of the ministerial code” when it was revealed that she used her personal email to share an official document with a parliamentary colleague.

Rishi Sunak re-appointed her home secretary just six days later.

In March 2023 an email was sent in Braverman’s name which blamed an “activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants, and the Labour Party” for blocking attempts to tackle “illegal immigration”. This message looked to me to be a potential breach of Paragraph 5.1 of the ministerial code as it was a direct attack on the impartiality of the civil service.

Yet Rishi Sunak took no action against her.

In May 2023 it was revealed that Braverman had asked civil servants for special treatment following her conviction for speeding in the summer of 2022. The courts had given Braverman the option of a three-point penalty on her driving licence and a fine, or joining a speed awareness course as part of a group. Braverman allegedly tried to use her political connections to arrange a one-to-one awareness course instead.

Another potential breach of the code, but again Sunak took no action against her.

Later in May 2023, it was revealed that Braverman may have broken the ministerial code by failing to declare her years of work with the Rwandan government via her Africa Justice Foundation. Lawyers trained by Braverman’s charity are now involved in the UK’s £140m deal to send asylum-seekers to a camp in Rwanda – a scheme Braverman admits she “obsesses” and “dreams” about.

Rishi Sunak took no action against her.

To me, it seems Braverman hates the rule of law because it stops her from mistreating asylum-seekers as she sees fit. If anyone “needs to be jailed” it’s Braverman.

Sasha Simic

London

I have hope Great Britain is still a caring nation

I congratulate you on the numerous articles expressing views that the way asylum seekers are being treated by our government is inhumane. Suella Braverman has admitted that our asylum system is broken, though omits to say that it is her political party that has broken it.

The desperate people arriving in small boats are a small percentage of the total number of refugees waiting for the Home Office to process their application. If that had been done in a timely manner for all who are languishing in hotels, the extortionate cost of housing them all would not have been incurred and those who have legitimate claims to be granted asylum could be working to help our economy grow.

If the government had any integrity they would issue a manifesto including their immigration policy and give the British public the chance to vote on it by holding a general election now.

If this were to happen I hope I am right in believing that Great Britain is still a caring nation and will reject these policies. I am 88 years old and have always been proud to be British, and I still am in regards to our support for Ukraine. But I am ashamed of most of the other policies imposed on us.

Margaret Crosby

Hertfordshire

Are the nicknames necessary?

Why is it necessary or acceptable to give English female sports teams, such as those for netball and football, patronising nicknames? These people are international sportswomen, not “roses” or “lionesses”.

Alan Brown

Wirral